I am the director of an Alzheimer's unit in a nursing home.  Our entire program is designed for people with Alzheimer's and related dementias and to help residents function at their highest level.  We NEVER medicate our residents to sedate them.  We try everthing possible to reduce disruptive or harmful behaviors without medications. However, when people are paranoid, and experience visual and or auditory hallucinations it is cruel to not provide medications which can relieve these symptoms.  When residents become so irritated that they yell, scream, and strike out, usually asking them to help set the table will not work.  Those of us who work in this field know antipsychotics DO work for some residents with dementia.  Our goal is to help our residents to enjoy life, and we always try to make decisions with "quality of life" in mind.  I am in total agreement that nursing homes need to provide more education to staff on how to deal with dementia and that drugs are not a substitute for adequate staffing by people trained to deal with these issues.  I am in total disagreement with the current push to remove the use of these medications as a medical/therapeutic intervention.