Psych drug research is stuck. Here’s how to unstick it

Published: | 5:27 pm

BEFORE HE ALLEGEDLY used a kitchen knife to slash Deane Kenny Stryker to death at the Winchester Library, Jeffrey Yao racked up a long record of terror. Neighbors reported property damage and violent behavior, and police took him to Winchester Hospital five times between 2013 and 2017, according to the Globe.

And if it weren’t already clear that the criminal justice system was ill-equipped to handle him, consider this: Yao, who pleaded not guilty, has recently been moved to a maximum security psychiatric hospital, after the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office told a judge he was too mentally ill for prison.

Much about the 23-year-old suspect’s motives is still shrouded in mystery. But Yao’s chaotic journey is a case study on the disheartening lag in new treatment options for those with mental disorders. The fact that this isn’t a new problem doesn’t make it any less urgent. In 2016, the Globe’s Spotlight Team investigated the overall impact of the state’s decision to close psychiatric hospitals without building a sturdy system to replace them. The series found that budget-cutting and retrenchment have left patients at the greatest risk of harming others or themselves in the care of parents, cops, prison guards, judges, and emergency room personnel.

That series focused on a case that has similar echoes and points to the wheel of despair faced by families and professionals alike. A 35-year-old Uxbridge man named Lee Chiero cycled through psychotic episodes and hospitalizations. Chiero would leave with a bottle of medication, but his underlying paranoia made it unlikely he’d swallow many pills, so the delusions would return and the wheel would turn again. In the grips of his illness, Chiero stabbed his mother to death.

Of course, most people struggling with mental illness are not violent. But finding proper custodial care is only part of the puzzle. For lack of a better term, drug development in the field of psychiatry is stuck — robbing patients and therapists of the precision tools needed to treat illnesses that can devastate lives. Although then-new drugs like Prozac helped unlock treatment of depression in the late 1980s, the next wave of blockbusters simply hasn’t materialized.

And existing drugs still come with debilitating side effects. A scenario that played out recently for one elderly dementia patient at a nationally known nursing home chain summoned up the absurd image of a circular firing squad. The nonagenarian patient was given the antipsychotic Seroquel to quiet her anxious shrieks — but the Food and Drug Administration’s guide lists the number one side effect as “risk of death in the elderly with dementia.”

– Boston Globe

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