Kildare: Failure To Monitor Drug Side-Effects Killing Patients: Psychiatrist

Failure to monitor the side-effects of drugs to treat long-term mental illness is shaving up to 20 years off the lives of thousands of patients, according to a leading consultant psychiatrist.

Siobhán Barry said up to 100,000 people, “enough to fill Croke Park on any given Sunday”, are on psychotropic medications — which have been shown to cause conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

This was mainly because of the significant weight gain associated with these drugs, said Dr Barry. In addition, many suffering mental ill health also smoked, and this compounded their physical health problems.

Yet the reality was psychiatric outpatients were not regularly monitored for the adverse health effects of long-term medication.

Ideally, their metabolic and cardiac health should be monitored from the time they started on medication and then checked every six months, Dr Barry said.

Potential problems could be picked up that way and addressed early. Failure to carry out these health checks was “reckless”, she said.

Instead, she said, they “die 20 years younger than their peers” who do not have enduring mental illness and are not on long-term medication.

The drugs in question included powerful tranquillisers such as Olanzapine, used to treat schizophrenia, rather than common antidepressants.

Addressing doctors at the Irish Medical Organisation’s AGM in Co Kildare, Dr Barry proposed a motion calling on Health Minister James Reilly to request that the Mental Health Commission audit the adequacy of facilities available for the physical monitoring of outpatients prescribed long-term psychotropic medication.

The motion was passed unanimously.

A separate motion calling on Dr Reilly to “urgently publish guidelines” in respect of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act was also passed.

Outgoing IMO president, consultant psychiatrist Matt Sadlier, said failure to supply guidelines to doctors was akin to giving someone sitting a driving test a copy of a Road Traffic Act instead of the rules of the road.

However, the Department of Health said yesterday that a final draft of the guidance document to assist health professionals in the implementation of the Act has been signed off by a committee tasked with drawing up the guidelines.

“It is expected that this document will be ready for publication and dissemination shortly,” a department spokesman said.