Do. The connection. It felt lick you were talking to someone in a vegetative state. Sheila macvicar investigates the deadly risk of drugging dementia thanks for joining us, im joie chen. Its often the vulnerable among us at risk. Dementia patients losing the ability to communicate and control their own behaviour. We cant know what they are thinking. In an attempt to calm them, Nursing Homes will often use powerful drugs. America tonights Sheila Macvicar has investigated the affect it intent have on dementia patients and tells us theres evidence the drugs could be more dangerous, deadly than previously thought. We childproofed the doors to make shoe she wouldnt get out. When marias mother developed dementia, she began to wonder rer. She worried her mother would not be safe unless in a nursing home. This is the person who sacrificed and did everything she did for you. How can i, as her daughter, just say hey, i cant do this. So i struggled with it. My aunt said you need to put your mum in a home,. In a place shell be safe. Yes, a place where they can watch her 24 hours a day and shed have the attentions she needs. Reporter she found one in california. Idle acre, a secure facilities, with a high rating, five stars. When i go to a hotel, and i choose a 546 star resort, i expect a 5star hotel. Great service, food, accommodation. So in my mind i correlate that with hey, its a 5star facility, they have nothing but the best. Guerra says her mother did not get the best there. Far from it. One think sanchez got was the antipsychotic drug. My sons and i on her birthdays would take cakes and shed fall asleep. And i would ask the nurses that say why is she so sleepily. They said oh, she probably was up late. Mid visit shed conk out. What do you think she lost. What did you lose, what did your family lose . The connection. The ability to be able to connect with her. It felt like you were talking to someone in a vegetated date. This drug is approved for adults with schizophrenia. Mary was not schizophrenic, but she was used offlabel for symptoms like agitation or aggression. In spite of a blackbox warning. An urgent type issued by the food and drug administration. For more than a decade the f. D. A. Warned antipsychotic can cause deaths and other serious complications in people with dementia. With that warning, a Government Accountability office study found a third, 33 of nursing home residents with dementia received antipsychotics. Profile the people who should not be given the drugs. Tony is staff attorney for advocates for nurse aring home reform. Psychotropic drug use rates tell you whether the care is personally centered, focused on the needs of residents or whether they are the facility, staff and focused on treating everyone the same. All complaints and resistance to care is something that should be medicated away. The f. D. A. Warning has had little impact. Its easy. Its easy to call a physician and get a prescription and give it to them and suddenly they are quiet. The status quo is not good. Dr helen is founder and director of ageing. In a study, kales found the risk of dying was much higher than previouslile thought. In just six months, the antipsychotic had one additional death for every patient with dementia. And additional deaths for 27 patients. Proxim and saraquel. And won more death for every 50. The study looked at what happened in a 6month period. Many give residents with dementia these drugs for year. Everything looks like a nail. Out in the field we had most providers, not psychiatrists. Most people that see people with dementia as beam with primary care, and they receive a little bit of training, but have not received the kind of training that we think are necessary on what are the underlying causes of the illness. Medicare in 2012 launched programs to address symptoms without antipsychotics. This year they included them in Nursing Homes. A member of the Certification Group said the threat of receiving fewer stars would bush nursing stars to describe fewer antipsychotics. Thats using the power of the marketplace, using all consumers and nursing arms looked at the system, and used the information to decide what Nursing Homes they want to go and check out more closely. Some Nursing Homes to find ways to care for residents with dementia without relying on drugs. Half a year after medicare changed, we found plenty of Nursing Homes where its business as usual. America tonight has identified more than a dozen Nursing Homes across the country, each with a perfect 5star rating for medicare. It conditions to describe these drugs at high levels. In each of thort facilities, two out of five longterm residents are prescribed they say lethal drugs. This is one of eem. At idle acre 52 of residents receive antipsychotics according to medicare. Thats 2. 5 times the national average. The nursing home still has a 5star rating. What i call the 5star righting system is enforcement like. If the rate is high, if you have done something wrong, if you drug people without the necessary clinical matters, you have done something wrong. Nursing homes are rarely fine for prescribing antipsychotics, when they are, the fines are minimal. Theres 100,000 residents in antipsychotics than there were 3. 5 years ago. It was amazing. If you look at the issue, its intolerable. We have a long way to go. We have 300,000 nursing road residents on antipsychotics. Its a number, its an embarrassment. Marias mother quit school. Eventually landing work in hollywood as a wig maker. She entered pageants and was named the princess of personality. She lift idle acre in an ambulance. She was really dehydrated. She was malnourished, she has sepsis and she had pneumonia. Back at the hospital guerra sued idle acre because of the treatment received, including for the antipsychotic she was drugged with. The lawsuit was settled out of the court. Mary moved to a new nursing home where she didnt receive antipsychotics. Though she could no longer speak, gurr our asaid she caught glimpses of her mothers personality. Eyes lit up. I felt she had that opportunity before she passed to have that quite relationship with her. A quiet relation, guerra said, only possible because here mother was free from psychotics next, the final words of addiction, and the survivors giving them voice. Later, the lassareth drug, an anecdote to americas heroin epidemic. Why more officers are carrying a drug to fight overdoses. Hot on america tonights website, shut out. A gay catholic on the popes words and why many feel they should judge. At aljazeera. Com americatonight. Going on, not just in this country, but around the world. Getting the news from the people who are affected. People need to demand reform. Ali velshi on target weeknights 10 30p et al jazeera america, weekday mornings. Catch up on what happened overnight with a full morning brief. Get a first hand look with indepth reports and investigations. Start weekday mornings with al jazeera america. Open your eyes to a world in motion. In our fast forward segment, could we reported extensively on the sharp uptick in heroin use, in places you wouldnt expect, and heroin overdoses with tragic consequences. Use of the drug by young people doubled in the last decade. And overdoses, quadrupled. Perhaps facing the truth about drug death. In a Grassroots MovementScientists Say families want the legacy of the their children, however painful, to live on and make a difference. My name is margaret. I lost my daughter sue to heroin on august 6, 2013. The police came to the house, and i just thought that they were, you know, she was in gaol again. They asked if i was alone, i said no, my husband is at the shop, we can do there if we need to go there. They said lets go back there, and they told us that she had died. It was such a shock, even though you knew it was going to happen, it was a shock that it did. I included the heroin in her obit obit u aary because she wanted to. She knew she would only live to 30, 40, 45. She said keep this, if i die i want in in my obituary. She said i was a perfect daughter and my parents never knew i was using or drinking for at least the first five years, from age 1217. Then only suspected it until the last 10 years of my life when i couldnt hide it any more. During the last 10 years i never few from one day to the next where i was going to be. I ate out of garbage cans, beg and stole. You become a liar and thief. Next you lose your family, real friends and eventually your life. The light of my life, my daughter, was taken away. Even then i could not quit. I have quit now, but i am dead. Dont wait as long as i did, give your life another chance. She wanted other people to get help, because she couldnt. She wand her wanted her daughter back, but could not overcome her addiction long enough to get her back. Im kathleen, i lost my son to heroin overdose. I got the phone call that logan overdosed, from his dad, who was told by neighbours who saw police and balance outside the his. I left here and drove to the hospital. In peaksville. Which resist, i dont know. A 15minute drive, he was in the e. R. , and he went up to the i. C. U. After that and was there for five days before they determined that there was no way he could recover. I included heroin in the obituary because it well, it never occurred to me to do anything other than that. Logan fought Substance Abuse for eight years of his life, experienced many periods of success, a kind, intuitive, strong and generous young man. Ultimately he lost his battle is is a heartbreaking reminder of the heroin epidemic in this country. Its prevalent in this small town, six. Kids, including logan, overdosed in the last two years. One every four months, and logan new them all. Im speakingy, and i lost my son to heroin. On may 30th, 2015. We got a call around 6 15 in the morning, and the e doctor told us that adam had been brought in by ambulance several hours earlier, of a suspected drug overdose. By 3 oclock that afternoon he was pronounced dead. I included heroin in the obituary, because there is huge heroin epidemic in the Northern Kentucky area, as well as across the nation, our charismatic, beautiful second and brother died on saturday from a cardiac arrested. With endless positive traits, adam had the potential to be anything, but drugs crept into his life while he was in high school. The worry that we felt watching adam struggle has been replaced by a deep feeling of loss that exists, knowing we will never see hays smiling face again. I wanted to let people know it was a drug overdose. Was i trout of it no, but we needed to stop burying young people. She break into houses. Wed give her money. She stole from us many times. Friends helped her, prostitution. When she dies. She was with someone. They did it any which they can. Logan would take money, go through the medicine cabinet. I would confront him on it. I prefer not to have him around. Blocking up the change and have my purse. Its exhausting to deal with that. What most families do is slowly accommodate the addict and before you know if you are living as a prisoner to this persons addiction. I never thought adam would do heroin. He was working for his uncle. A coworker found him using at lunchtime. I believe the needle was in his arm in his car. His uncle let him go, and i think for adam that was the lowest of the low. After losing sue to heroin after the first high, they never get it again. They are trying. They are so addict. Its a helpless situation. You hope that. Im antonio mora, in new york, breaking news here. A News Conference on the School Massacre in oregon, 10 people are dead after a gunman opened fire on the campus of the Umpqua Community college. Several others were injured in the shooting, 70 files from eugene, lets listen to the sheriff. Good evening, i want to remind everyone that the focus is on the families and victims of todays horrific incident. We have paired but deputies and detectives with the family members of the deceased to help work through the process of grieving and answering questions to the families of these victims. Also in an attempt to identify the victims. As we talked previously, this is considered a mass casualty, and with a mass casualty comes protocols, protocols that will likely result in us not able to release the name of the victims, until at least tomorrow. Notifications of the family is the priority. We ask the media report that. Respect the victims and the families as we manage the most difficult times, we have information to leads us to believe that we know who the shooter is. The official i. D. Will come from the medical examiners office. Let me be very clear, i will not game the shooter. I will not give him the credit he sought prior to the malicious act. Media will get the name confirmed in time. Youll never here me mention his game. We encourageage media and the community to avoid using it, you not to repeat it, and encourage you not to gore fi. He in no way deserves this. Focus your attention on the victims, families, and helping them get through this difficult time. We demo that you have two heroic officers who responded into the building within minutes, exchanging gun fire with the suspect. The Oregon Police are handling the shooting aspects and will release information surrounding that portion of the investigation at some point in the future. Tactical teams and bomb squads have cleared all the buildings on the campus. They are currently going through the hundreds of vehicles parked in the parking lots to clear those as well. [technical difficulties ] we are having problems with the signal from roseburg oregon, we were listening to the sheriff of roseburg, asking people to focus on the victims of this horrible attack of Umpqua Community college and said that he would not name the shooter and no one should focus on the shooter so he should not get the attention he wanted. And spoke about how two officers were heroic in what happened, and what by all accounts was a Quick Police Response to this terrible tragedy. We are waiting to see if we can reestablish the connection. We were expecting to hear from the interim president of the college at the press conference. Lets go to allen schauffler, there in roseburg oregon. What have you learnt through the evening . We are in stuart park in roseburg, behind me you may see a crowd of 80 or 100 or so. A couple of local folks decided that they needed to get together tonight and called friends, putting information on social media, et cetera, and gathered in stuart park tonight at 8 oclock. Lets honour the people who have been killed, and support their families as much as we can. I talked to a young lady and said it feels like the entire town is going to be here tonight. Local businesses they went knocking on doors at local businesses saying everyone donated what they could, food, water, what not. It will be quite a scene, well stay with us. Well come back to you now, we can here the interim president , lets listen to hear. The focus should be on how many people opened their hearts to help us today. Thank you. I will be headed over to the candlelight vigil now, with that i will ask my Public Information officer to come up and answer questions and discuss any other administrative issues. Just a couple of its here. We will be continuing to post information to our twitter act. Reporter can you look at a picture. And we are using the hashtag u. C. Shooting, at douglas cosa. Further updates will be posted to the twitter accounts as well as flash alerts. Its not determines when the next briefing will be. But when thats decided when they could post the information. Flash word. Net. Thats all i have. I just have a couple of logistics. If you could bare with me we have been listening into a news complrches conference out of roseburg oregon. Allen schauffler is there in roseburg. I have had the sad duty in the past of covering this type of story, it its difficult to describe how it affects a community, i am sure you are experiencing that now. Absolutely. Its been a difficult day for a lot of folks in this town. Its a small community, 20,000. Little more than that, in the town of roseburg. The college itself, 3,000, maybe more students. A lot of parttimers. People that turn out. Local businesses have donated food and water. People brought out candles, and therell be a candlelight vigil starting now. We hear drums and native american chanting. We expect a turn out tonight. We talked to an organiser, and she said this is what we do, this is who we are. There is that thing that happens in a case like this too, where people just want to help, and people just want to connect somehow, and anyhow, and tonight in roseburg it took the form of a candlelight vigil growing for a couple of minutes and we expect hell grow more in the middle of the night. Its been a tough day. We spoke to a group of ladies who said being here, being together has helped. They havent just heard of names of who was killed in the incident. They know they have lost friends. Being together helps them to fill the void lacking information, if you will. Long terrible day in southern oregon. You spoke to some children, how terribly earlier in the day. I cant imagine how they were affected. Really dramatically, one young woman, 17 years old, her fourth day at college. She said she was terrified, didnt know when shed be able to go back to campus. She kind of laughed and said shed go back at some point. People are making a point of staying tough and strong. People in that classroog, for next door to that will classroom had a horrifying experience, one young lady saying she couldnt believe what she was hearing say it cant be what happens elsewhere in the country, but she heard shot after shot after shot. She and everyone in the classroom she was in managed to get out, and get out safely. We know that 10 people did not. Our hearts go out to the parents. Thank you. Again, well have the latest on the massacre there in roseburg at Umpqua Community college at the top of the hour. Im antonio mora, see you then. Bsh bsh im ali velshi, on target solving syria. Vladimir putin takes Decisive Action as president obama takes a back seat. Its america versus russia in a cold warstyle struggle for influence in the middle east. Russian fighter jets are dropping bombs in syria. They are upping the ante in the 4. 5 year war. Russias moves are laying bear how many the United States is losing the initiative in syria, and by extension in the broader