Care of older people: Mental health problems

doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7289.789

BMJ 2001;322:789-791 ( 31 March )

Education and debate

Care of older people

Mental health problems

This is the third in a series of four articles

Alistair Burns, professor of old age psychiatry ^a, Tom Dening, consultant psychiatrist ^b, Robert Baldwin, consultant old age psychiatrist ^c.

^a University Dept of Psychiatry, Withington Hospital, Manchester M20 8LR, ^b Box 311, Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge CB1 5EF, ^c York House, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester M13 9BX

Correspondence to: A Burns A_Burns@fs1.with.man.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Specialist mental health services for older people have grown rapidly and successfully over the past two decades, aiming tooffer services that are comprehensive, accessible, responsive,individualised, multidisciplinary, accountable, and systematic.As with all mental health problems, the burden falls on primarycare (where minor morbidity often goes undetected) and specialistservices tend to be reserved for those conditions and patientswhere diagnosis and management is problematic. The total costof caring for people with dementia in the United Kingdom is estimatedat £6bn ($9bn) a year¹ $---$ a figure whose impact is diluted bythe fact that it combines both health and social services. Weoutline the current evidence of benefit in four areas: servicescurrently available; interventions that have been shown to beeffective; rating scales that should be recommended to cliniciansfor detecting common mental health problems; and the needs ofcarers.

Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)

Services for older people

A recent report by the Audit . . . [Full text of this article]

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