Antipsychotics in Dementia

Abstract

Behaviour disorders and psychosis may represent a greater challenge in patients with dementia. There are evidence-based recommendations to assess psychological and behavioral symptoms of dementia and the practice guidelines of American psychiatric association (APA) reinforce general principles of good clinical care. However, when these patients initiate a psychotropic, the agents often continue to be prescribed for a long time, even after the symptoms disappeared. The recommendation of reduce/stop an antipsychotic medication within 4 months of initiation may seem counterintuitive when the patient is better, with remission of the original symptoms. However, the studies showed that a large amount of patients with dementia can discontinue antipsychotic medication without a return of agitation or psychosis. Older patients are a particularly susceptible population and the risk/benefit of any medication should be carefully considered. For most patients the risk of harm outweighs the profits of continuing treatment and we need a routine evaluation of this factor to identify these cases.

It's important to reduce unnecessary medications but agitation and psychosis associated with severe distress also carry serious risks; discontinuing these medications can be dangerous so we need to manage it with caution evaluating each case as an individual one.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.