A staggering number of nursing home residents are being given antipsychotics medication by facilities in order to cover up staffing shortages.
According to a bombshell report from the The New York Times, 21 percent of nursing home residents are on antipsychotics medications.
The drugs can be dangerous - especially for people with dementia - and increase a person's likelihood of dying from health problems or other conditions.
The report claims that nursing homes are often using these drugs to sedate residents in order to make up deficiencies in staffing.
Misusing these drugs can cause a facility's reputation to fall, so in order to avoid officially reporting the usage of antipsychotics, nursing homes are resorting to falsely diagnosing residents with schizophrenia to dodge reporting regulations.
Nursing home residents are being given antipsychotics drugs that could potentially be dangerous in order to cover up staffing shortages in some facilities (file image)
Around one out of every nine nursing home residents in America have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, while only one in every 150 people in the general population have the condition.
Nearly one-third of long-term residents diagnosed with the condition by nursing homes in 2018 have no record of previously being treated for the condition, according to a federal report.
The false diagnoses are a form of reputation protection for the nursing homes.
A home that distributes a high amount of antipsychotics drugs could garner a poor public reputation or rating from the government.
Nursing homes are rated by the government on a five star scale, with a five stars being the best.
Facilities using a high amount of these drugs will see their rating fall.
Poor ratings would cause potential residents or their family members to instead seek care
