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Neuroleptic usage in a community mental handicap unit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Richard J. Harvey  and
Sherva E. Cooray
Richard J. Harvey
Affiliation:
Lecturer, Academic Unit of Psychiatry, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, St Charles' Hospital, London W10 6DZ
Sherva E. Cooray
Affiliation:
Consultant Psychiatrist in Learning Disability, Kingsbury Community Unit, Parkside Health NHS Trust, Honeypot Lane, London NW9
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Increasing concern has been expressed in the psychiatric literature and general press about the use of neuroleptic medication for the treatment of behaviour disturbance in the mentally handicapped (Buck & Sprague, 1989). The issue was highlighted in a television documentary (Public Eye, BBC2, 1 May 1992) which reported a number of cases of tardive dyskinesia in mentally handicapped people who had been treated with neuroleptics. The programme, although taking a characteristically slanted view, will have made an impression on relatives, patients and the general public. It was also intimated that British families may be preparing to test the legal grounds for prescribing these drugs to the mentally handicapped, particularly where there is no formal psychiatric diagnosis.

Type
Audit
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 17 , Issue 11 , November 1993 , pp. 657 - 660
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

Footnotes

A full list of references is available on request to the authors.

References

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