The number of dementia patients being sedated, tied to chairs or locked in bedrooms by staff in hospitals and care homes has doubled in three years, figures from the Information Centre for Health and Social Care have shown. Some 2,979 restraint orders were granted for such patients last year, up from 1,459 in 2009/10. The measures are officially referred to as Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and are sometimes necessary to prevent confused patients wandering off or harming themselves. The Independent notes that Mind, the mental health charity, has said that the figures, which show large regional variations in the use of the legal safeguards, means that the "fundamental human rights" of vulnerable people could be at risk. "The Government should urgently review deprivation of liberty safeguards, to resolve the ongoing confusion about their use and to ensure that people who are at their most vulnerable have their fundamental human rights protected," a spokesman comments.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:13:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015