Mental health researchers are sounding the alarm over a growing body of data suggesting that dementia patients in Ontario are increasingly being assigned to scarce healthcare beds, ostensibly reserved for psychiatric patients.
Medical experts describe the trend as troubling, noting such moves threaten to overtax a mental health system that struggles to deliver adequate psychiatric care at the best of times.
Dementia patients currently occupy one-third of psychiatric beds in Ontario hospitals, according to data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, in part because traditional hospital beds and long-term care homes are also packed.
Experts warn such a setup risks the health of dementia patients, who may find themselves confined to units ill-suited to their needs and receiving treatment that can do more harm than good.
"I've never seen a person come back from a psychiatric admission with dementia who didn't have at least one other major psychotropic drug added or increased," said Dr. Allen Power of the University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging.
Power said dementia patients are at risk of serious side effects from those medications, which are sometimes used as "chemical restraints." Possible side effects could include increased risk of falls, stroke and death, he added.
"I don't think psychiatric admissions are helpful other than taking a dangerous situation and calming it for a short time," Power said. "I don't think it is helpful in the long run."
Even so, psychiatric admissions for people with dementia have more than doubled over the past 10 years as the prevalence of dementia has increased in Ontario's aging population.
And the crisis, which the data shows already costs the province about $300 million a year, is expected to worsen due to the reduction of available beds during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ballooning number of residents living with dementia.
Such patients are already spending too much time in psychiatric wards while they wait for a spot in a long-term care home, said Dr. Sachin Sarin, an acute in-patient and emergency psychiatrist in a mental health unit in St. Catharines, Ont.
Sarin said wait times can stretched passed one or even two years despite figures from Health Quality Ontario pegging the provincial median wait at 90 days.
These intervals are predicted to soar as the number of people living with dementia in Ontario will double by 2038, according to a document prepared in 2016 by the former Liberal government's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
In the interim, the Ontario Long Term Care Association warns that provincial measures introduced to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes immediately reduces the number of beds available — such as a directive preventing the facilities from grouping new residents in rooms of three or four.
Sarin said that poses a problem when dementia patients no longer need psychiatric care.
"There's no place for them to go," he said.
Months into the global pandemic, overall mental health needs are also escalating, Sarin said.
He said he's treating more people in crisis with serious mental illness who delayed seeking care or who had reduced outpatient supports as a result of the pandemic, he said. he fears that specialized psychiatric beds will be unavailable when needed for urgent mental health concerns such as acute psychosis, suicidal intent or significant depression.
The very fact that a dementia patient has been in psychiatric care could affect their ability to get a long-term care bed, said John Hirdes, a University of Waterloo professor who studies health care delivery in geriatrics and psychiatry.
He said dementia patients who have spent time on a psychiatric ward may later be denied a long-term care bed on the basis of their past medical history.
“If it's a behavioural issue and an older person, I think there's still a stigma attached to that,” he said.
He wants to see better mental health resources in nursing homes so that residents won't be stigmatised for having been in psychiatric care.
A few specialized hospitals, such as Ontario Shores in Whitby, and Baycrest Centre in Toronto, have created units to address the crisis.
But the overall number of beds are limited, concentrated in urban areas, and do not exist in all communities.
A representative for Ontario's Ministry of Health, for its part, said that while the department funds and regulates hospitals, it "does not play a direct role in the governance or management of hospitals."
"While it is important for the Ministry to receive feedback about experiences in the health care system, hospital administrators are responsible for the day-to-day management of their hospitals, including the delivery of services and implementation of programs ... within the parameters of provincial legislation," Anna Miller said in a written statement.
