Tag Archives: chemical cosh

The disgrace of a nation that treats old people like animals

Let’s imagine for a moment that it’s routine practice in this country to sedate babies who won’t settle: that the more they cry, the more drugs are poured down their tiny throats.

The same treatment, let’s imagine, is also routine for the mentally disabled: whenever they create too much disturbance, we simply cosh them with chemicals.

There would be a national outcry. Heads would roll. Money would be found immediately to train medical staff and carers so that such a scandal could never, ever happen again.

Now let’s stop imagining and face the appalling truth. The nightmare scenario that I’ve just painted is precisely what’s happening to some of the most vulnerable people in the land — the elderly.

Child victims of the chemical cosh: Boy who killed himself after taking Ritalin

Captured in a family video, Harry Hucknall gives a cheeky grin before whizzing off down the street on his new bike. His father, Darren, will never forget the moment — when Harry was seven — and often watches the scene again and again.

It is a precious memory of Harry who, one Sunday evening in September last year, kissed his mother Jane and older brother, David, goodnight before going upstairs to his bedroom and locking the door. He then hanged himself with a belt from his bunk bed.

He was ten years old.

His father blames Harry’s death on two ‘mind-altering’ drugs that his son had been prescribed by a psychiatrist to cure his boisterous behaviour and low spirits.

‘Curb dangerous chemical cosh drugs for dementia victims’

In an unprecedented move, a coalition of 45 public and private bodies and charities has pledged to transform the way patients are treated and drive down the use of anti-psychotic drugs. Experts have argued that the ‘chemical cosh’, recommended for short-term use to calm down people who are agitated, has been widely over-prescribed for dementia sufferers in an attempt to keep them quiet, particularly in care homes.