Wrongful use of anti-psychotic drugs to quiet annoying patients led to 12 deaths and many accidents in Chicago's nursing homes in recent years, according to an article in a series running in the Chicago Tribune. Calling the series "Compromised Care," the paper is exposing the deplorable services, criminal acts, and dysfunctional monitoring of programs and safety of Illinois nursing home residents.

Reporters examined 40,000 state and federal documents and identified 1,200 violations affecting 2,900 patients involving psychotropic medications since 2001.

Thousands of elderly and disabled people have been affected, many of them drugged without their consent or without a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis that would justify treatment, state and federal inspection reports show.

Last week a special task force heard scathing criticisms of these and failed programs, and questioned the placement of young people, some of whom had been convicted of felonies into nursing homes with frail elderly.

The series lays bare the failures of operation and staffing leading to assault and rape of patients by other patients. The Tribune reports that 13 nursing homes are owned by two men, long-time partners, whose facilities account for only two percent of the nursing home population, but 10 percent of nursing home residents who are mentally ill. One partner, Michael Giannini, objected to the reports about his business telling reporters, "We are being held to a perfect standard in an imperfect world."

Similar abuses for nursing home residents have been reported previously.