> Likewise, a 2025 study found that people with dementia who were taking antidepressants experienced more rapid cognitive decline. “Sometimes we think a lot about medications when we start them, but we don’t think enough about stopping them at some point,” says Sara Garcia Ptacek, a neurologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who worked on the study.

My aunt had Alzheimer's and had to be put on anti-anxiety medication just so that her caretaker could manage her. (This was at the point where she no longer recognized her children, but recognized her siblings.)

Even if it accelerated her eventual end, it certainly improved the situation. She would have been impossible to take care of otherwise.

That being said, before Alzheimer's, she was a very anxious person and often difficult. If she was medicated earlier in life, would it have accelerated the onset of Alzheimer's?