by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: May 04, 2009

Not all older people misunderstand the importance of prescription drugs, some have lived long enough to respect their use and to be wary of their dangers. Generally speaking the ratios of older people that question the use of some drugs far outweigh those of the younger generation. Yet, the question here is how some elderly people, through a lack of knowledge, misuse prescription drugs.

Why do some elderly people misuse prescriptions?

People in the seventies and eighties and beyond lived through times when there were no antibiotics and no miracle drugs and they well know how hard it was to cure some infections. Also, going to the doctor was only done in emergencies and medicine as we now have it was only a dream. That dream has now come true. For every ailment there is a pill or an elixir to cure it. Many do not understand how far the medicine has come and they do not understand the reactions that can occur when some medicines are mixed.

Doctors and health care workers, according to some older people, possess that special kind of tender loving care and whatever they do or say must be right. This is found in some uneducated parts of the country. Their thoughts are hangovers from a time when a doctor's word was never to be questioned. Today, with the medical profession being larger, better informed, or less informed, and not all are as moral as they should be, there is room for older people to be misled. Not necessarily by intention, but by lack of knowledge. In the old days, most doctors only knew certain things and there was not as much pressure as there is today to cure all ills. Needless to say people did not live as long then as they do now. The elderly then misuse prescriptions because they have so much of it to misuse!

The overworked doctors insist that all medicines be brought in to be evaluated - or they should be - but doctors and clinics being more available today than yesterday, different opinions from many different doctors often allow an assortment of medicines to clutter up medicine cabinets. These are all potential hazards. An older person could think, well I was doing better while under that doctor's care and I am going to switch back to their medicine is not unheard of. It still happens. To take care of that problem we have family doctors who supposedly know and direct a person's visits to specialists. This method of diagnosis and treatment while designed to confront problems misunderstood by all patients, often does not work as efficiently as it was designed to work.

How to get beyond this health care problem and into reality?

Stress the importance of medicine while at the same time stressing its dangers. Too hasty recommendations by the FDA has caused many medicines to be given to people that didn't necessarily need them. Old age is a time that the body is slowly wearing down and all the money and medicine that is thrown at the problem does little or nothing to cure it. Their plight is a fact of life. Most elderly are aware of this and accept it. They are far more knowledgeable than younger people realize. Some things you only know because you have lived enough to figure them out. Much of the dilemma of modern day medicine falls into this category.

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