According to researchers, doctors overprescribe antipsychotic drugs to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior.Most antidepressants and dementia drugs cause more harm than good to patients, research director at Denmark's Nordic Cochrane Centre, Professor Peter Gotzsche said for the British Medical Journal.
Peter Gotzsche said that psychiatric drugs kill patients almost every year while causing few positive effects. Half a million elderly people living in the Western world die annually after taking these drugs.
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"Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm," the professor wrote.
Drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.
He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.
The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported.