# Understanding Medication Safety for Older Adults with Dementia and Mental Health Conditions
Older adults living with dementia and mental health conditions often take multiple medications to manage various health problems simultaneously—a situation known as polypharmacy. Despite being common in everyday medical practice, these vulnerable populations are rarely included in clinical drug trials, leaving doctors with limited evidence about which medications work best or are safest for them. This creates a significant gap in knowledge that affects the quality of care millions of older people receive.
NHS electronic health records—the digital databases that store patient information across the UK healthcare system—offer a promising solution to this problem. These databases contain detailed, long-term information about medication prescribing patterns in both specialist mental health services and general practice settings. Because the NHS provides comprehensive care to defined geographic populations, these records can track patients over many years, revealing how medications perform in real-world conditions among older adults who would typically be excluded from research studies. The databases capture important information about what combinations of drugs people actually take, how long they stay on medications, and what health outcomes follow.
However, realizing this potential requires overcoming significant challenges. Care for older people with dementia and mental health conditions typically involves multiple healthcare settings—memory clinics, psychiatric services, hospitals, and general practice—each with its own database system. Currently, linking information across these different systems remains difficult, making it hard to see the complete picture of a patient’s medication journey. Improving these data connections is essential to fully understand medication safety and effectiveness in this population.
For families, caregivers, and healthcare providers supporting older adults, this work represents an important step toward evidence-based prescribing decisions. Better use of existing NHS data could help identify which medications genuinely help, which combinations should be avoided, and which groups of patients are most at risk for adverse effects—ultimately leading to safer, more personalized care for older people with dementia and mental health conditions.
Source Information
Original Title: The use of NHS databases to identify and manage pharmacotherapy in people with dementia and/or late-life mental disorders.
Authors: Sondh HK, Mueller C, Bishara D, Stewart R
Journal: Expert review of clinical pharmacology (Oct 2025)
PubMed ID: 41100343
DOI: 10.1080/17512433.2025.2576102
This summary was generated using AI to make recent geriatrics and frailty research more accessible. Please refer to the original article for complete details.
