By clicking
Talk to a Specialist, you agree to our
Privacy Policy. You also consent to receive calls and texts, which may be autodialed, from us and our customer communities. Your consent is not a condition to using our service. Please visit our
Terms of Use. for information about our privacy practices.
Turns out she had been prescribed Keppra for seizures which she never had and a side effect of THAT med is aggression! So all the aggression was a result of a med she never needed! Arghhh!
Got her off the Keppra after a year on it and she is now the sweetest person you can imagine. We are working now to wean her off the risperdal and when that's gone the Depakote. We're doing it slowly so we know what the effect is before we move ahead. So far so good. She is down to .5mg at night. She is walking better....less parkinson shuffle and the tremors have mostly gone. But the pill rolling continues.
All I can suggest is look at her other meds and see what the side effects of those are. And if they say temporary be sure to find out THAT definition because I think some of the docs define temporary as "until they die".
sorry you have this trouble. My mom has frequent episodes of hostility, hitting and scratching when they clean her. The geriatric psychiatrist adjusts her meds. She’s on a cocktail of several drugs now. She goes through phases, lately she has a case of the giggles. I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
At first we tried seroquel which has a heavy sedative effect and protocol is to keep increasing the dosage
All of these anti-psychotic drugs carry warning labels to not use in elderly dementia patients
Other drugs such as Ativan are very short lived in the system and sometimes are used in combination with sleep
Aides
I was and am very concerned about any meds for mom since she's been in a memory care facility for 2 years - she's approaching 95
Risperidone has been the lesser of evils compared to Ativan seroquel or haldol
I wouldn't recommend any drug but for us it helped keep her facility from sending her out on a psych hold
Didn’t seem to help him at all. Maybe they could try Ativan. They are trying that on my dad now. He is very anxious. He wasn’t sleeping at night and will barely sit long enough at the dinner table
to eat dinner. He’s in AL now but he did the same thing to me when I had him at my house. It’s so upsetting to not be able to help our parents. Bless you.
But thank you for the hope that like your mom,mine will have positive reaction to her new meds. God bless you and your dear ones
My mom was not prescribed dispersal, but she was on other psychiatric meds. She took antianxiety meds while still living at home and in Independent Living. She resisted the idea of an antidepressant although I believe she'd been depressed for most of her life.
My mother was the kind of person who read the side effect insert and proceeded to get them all.
Once she had a stroke, I signed off immediately on the psych meds that were recommended, and mom had no side effects. For the most part, she was calm, content and not sedated at all. She was a better version of herself. Occasionally, she would become agitated. We'd have her tested for a UTI and if that wasn't the issue, we'd call in the psych team to adjust meds.
Dementia is a progressive disease and the medical response to it needs to keep up with the symptoms.
I think that at the point where reassurance and soft music went working to ease paranoia, delusions and aggression, meds are worth a try.