Oliver McGowan was 18 years old when he was hospitalized in England with recurrent seizures and pneumonia. He was autistic, and he and his parents had one specific request for the medical team: no antipsychotic medications. When he had taken them in the past, they made his seizures worse and had devastating effects on his mood. Despite the family’s vehement protests, doctors gave him an antipsychotic. A few days later, Oliver suffered a lethal neurological side effect. A week later, he was taken off life support. An inquest into his death found that the drug had led to the rapid deterioration.
After his death in 2016, his mother, Paula, launched a campaign to mandate training on intellectual disability and autism for health care workers. In 2022, the U.K. National Health Service listened. Now, all health care workers in the NHS must complete both an online module and a live interactive session covering communication and accommodations needed for this population. The U.S. needs to follow suit, starting with medical schools.
I work in medicine. Seeing how doctors treat patients is eye-opening. On one hand really good doctors listen to what their patients say and try to find the best solution that the patients would like (after all, if they didn’t like it they wouldn’t follow through, which is even more dangerous sometimes!). Bad ones just prescribe a medicine and move on.
I think the reason this is becoming more and more common is because people keep pushing doctors to be more and more “efficient” per patient (spending the least amount of time per patient for profit). If we didn’t have that, these events would be more rare.