A study which sort of does and doesn't contradict the danger of antipsychotics in dementia treatment

Let's be frank. Antipsychotics are strong chemicals which affect body and brain. They're rarely prescribed by primary care physicans until recently. usually it's only psychiatrists who prescribe them for long term use because they're harsh chemicals. They work on more than the dopamine pathway which is why they cause so many side effects compared to something like cannibidol.

But this study shows they're not that dangerous.
Risk of Death With Atypical Antipsychotic Drug Treatment for Dementia
Meta-analysis of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/15/1934.short

"
Conclusions  Atypical antipsychotic drugs may be associated with a small increased risk for death compared with placebo. This risk should be considered within the context of medical need for the drugs, efficacy evidence, medical comorbidity, and the efficacy and safety of alternatives. Individual patient analyses modeling survival and causes of death are needed.
"

So they're not that dangerous?

I can't be arsed to read the study so I'll just pick at the abstract. The study uses data from unpublished trials. I wonder if a funnel plot has been done to see what the publication bias is like?

The study sponsors....are perhaps pharmaceutical companies?


"
Fifteen trials (9 unpublished), generally 10 to 12 weeks in duration, including 16 contrasts of atypical antipsychotic drugs with placebo met criteria (aripiprazole [n = 3], olanzapine [n = 5], quetiapine [n = 3], risperidone [n = 5]).
"

The length of these trials in this particular review is significantly shorter than the period of time covered by the study which highlighted the the danger of antipsychotic treatment in dementia.

The ...naturalistic or observational study...which sparked off the controversy was not a controlled trial. It was an observation of real life data. The study showed life expectancy was halved from about 3 years to about 1.5,. The proviso on this result is those in the drugged-with-the-chemical-cosh group may have been closer to death which was why their symptoms were worse which was why they were prescribed antipsychotics. The Royal College of Psychiatry knew this when it came up with the 1,800 deaths per year figure.

But most importantly, the drug does not heal the neurological problem. Not really. It just makes people docile. The drug is chemical restraint or a chemical cosh and the application of this sort of behavioural modification to our elders is bad practice. People, carers and people working in care homes need to be able to accept that our elders when close to death can be difficult to deal with. This last idea was not in the conclusions of the authors of this paper because psychiatrists are a bunch of fucking cunts who are making society ill and turning the human race into a race of slave robots for the post-Industrial Age machine.