Over medicating ? chemical restraint ?

Jessilynn40

I need some advice .. My step father who is only 61 years old has been battling frontal lobe dementia for 2 years now but recently his behaviors have increased to being up at night wandering from room to room , pacing and moderate confusing and anger, with possible treats of wanting to end his life , but he was not physical when having theses behaviors at the time. he could be redirected but it was really hard on my mother being his only care taker to stay up all night , work and have no support to be with him threw out the day so she was getting burned out.. So she recently took some FML time from work cause of the quick increase of behaviors and decline in his cognitive state of mind at this time he was only being treated with memory medication nothing to help with sun downing and ect. BUT NOW… he was recently admitted to a hospital in massachusetts and put on Divalproex 250mg 1 tab 3xs aday, Trazodone 50mg 3 tabs in the morning and at night , seroquel 25mg 2 tabs in the morning and 3 at night along with other meds when they cant control him at night . but now he is slurring his words, cant put words together or make sense of what he is saying, very unsteady on his feet, cant drink or eat him self , having to be straight cath. cause he can not pee along with days with out having a bowel movement.. they say he is a safety risk to the staff and patients but he never acted out physically in anyway before until now.. i think is cause he is trying to state his needs and cant from being over medicated and its increasing his agitation and ect from being over sedated .. cause he was able to form words and some what say his needs before all theses medications where given to him.. he now also sleeps all day and up at night and i understand its hard on the night workers but i feel if they start out low and one med at a time they might see a better out come.. We have tried everything to get him placed in a unit that supports people like him but there is alot of road blocks and you have to meet certain criteria .. but in the mean time any suggestions on who to contact and things that have helped othere before would be great .. also if you dont have the money then its a whole other ball game as well..

H1235

Welcome. A geriatric psych is really the best doctor to manage these kinds of medications. It can be hard to get an appointment if you even have one in your area. It might be best to ask for a transfer to a geriatric psych hospital to get the medication figured out. This board doesn’t get much traffic. Feel free to post on caring for a parent.

towhee

I am sorry, that is a lot of medications at once, although those particular medications and even that combination of medication types have been mentioned on here before. Did he go into the hospital for a physical issue and then become combative, or did he end up in the hospital because of behavior issues? Is he in regular hospital or psych unit? The problem is that no facility will take him until he is "stable" so they tend to prescribe multiple medications fairly quickly.

You said he had ftd and was on memory medications? Some memory medications are contraindicated for ftd, they can cause increased agitation.

Do post on the caring for a parent board.