“They Want Docile”

Summary Too many times I’m given too many pills…. [Until they wear off], I can’t even talk. I have a thick tongue when they do that. I ask them not to [give me the antipsychotic drugs]. When I say that, they threaten to remove me from the [nursing] home. They get me so I can’t think. I don’t want anything to make me change the person I am. —Walter L., an 81-year-old man given antipsychotic drugs in a Texas nursing facility, December 2016. It used to be like a death prison here. We cut our antipsychotics in half in six months. Half our residents were on antipsychotics. Only 10 percent of our residents…

© Human Rights Watch - lundi 5 février 2018