More than 140,000 dementia patients in the UK are given antipsychotics needlessly and some 1,800 deaths in elderly people each year have been linked to overprescribing, according to a report commissioned by the government.

The review showed that only around 36,000 of around 180,000 dementia patients prescribed antipsychotics received any benefit, according to the report’s author, Sube Banerjee, a professor of mental health and aging at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, who recommends that the use of the meds be cut by two-thirds over the next three years.

“Antipsychotics are used too often in dementia,” Banerjee tells The Guardian. We have a failure of the health and social care system to adjust to a changing world. We need to improve primary and social care. There’s no evidence that any drugs are good for this.”

One politician, the Liberal Democrat MP Paul Burstow, who has led a 10-year campaign highlighting the risks of excessive and inappropriate prescribing, tells the paper that “this review comes much too late for thousands of elderly people whose lives have been cut short by the reckless prescribing of anti-psychotic drugs. “The evidence that anti-psychotic drugs do more harm than good has been mounting for years. There is next-to-no benefit for the older person and prolonged prescribing can lead to premature death.”