A common complaint by nursing home staff is that elderly mentally ill patients are often verbally and sometimes even physically aggressive. It is important to understand that mental diseases such as Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's are incredibly frustrating for the patient, and unfortunately degenerative. Often, treated patients understand their predicament and are forced to live everyday knowing their minds are being taken over by a mysterious disease. This can incite aggression, anger, and mood irritability. Unfortunately, sometimes physical violence is a result of this. Nursing home staff are often trained on how to deal with a physically aggressive resident. However, the nursing home industry has a reputation for over dosing highly aggressive patients. While maintaing the safety of nursing home staff is extremely important, so is the overall well-being of residents. As mentioned in previous posts, over dosing a patient can be an extremely dangerous and reckless method of pacification. There are far too many health and dependency risks associated with over dosing.
The Department of Psychology at Hofstra University in Hempsted conducted a research study to see if elderly mentally ill patients had a higher chance of exhibiting violence or aggression than younger afflicted patients. Patients were assessed with a neuropsychological battery of tests and gauged for violence, aggression, and irritability of mood. The findings revealed that elderly patients are at the same risk for exhibiting violence/aggression as younger patients. This means, that according to this study, there is no correlation between age and aggression among mentally ill patients. The chance of violence or outbursts of anger remains the same for all mentally ill patients. As symptoms worsen, the likelihood of violence or aggression becomes significantly more prominent, but age does not correlate.
Attached is an interesting video on how to handle aggression in elderly patients.
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