WHAT ANTI-ANXIETY DRUGS ARE MOST USEFUL IN THE CARE OF THE CRITICALLY ILL PATIENT?
As indicated above, but worth repeating for emphasis, the anxious critically ill patient is not being adequately treated unless the cause for anxiety is determined and ameliorated or eliminated. Even though this principle of treating the underlying cause rather than just the symptoms is a universally pursued one in medicine, for psychological disorders it is common practice to attack only the symptoms. As a result the anti-anxiety agents have become widely misused throughout medicine to the extent that benzodiazepines are now the nation’s second most abused drugs after alcohol. The impact of this iatrogenic drug abuse problem goes far beyond the epidemiological implications of addiction; failure to recognize and deal with the causes of anxiety of patients can lead to lifelong disturbances in the patients themselves and, by reaction, problems for the medical profession. The latter problems take the form of loss of confidence in the profession, cynicism toward the motivation of health ca
