The acute geriatric psychiatry service: a suggested model

In general hospitals, especially on acute medical-surgical, and general psychiatric units, geriatric patients are often exposed to attitudes of resentment or rejection. Individuals with treatable mental illnesses may be relatively neglected or dismissed as "senile," and their special needs not attended to. This tends to occur when the particular psychological issues of elderly patients are not shared by most of the other patients, and also when staff members are prejudiced about old people, either because of fear about their own aging or because of unresolved difficulties with parents or grandparents. The authors believe that age-specific geriatric units are the most effective treatment format for the elderly in need of psychiatric care. One example of such a unit opened in 1980, the Geriatric Psychiatry Unit currently in operation at the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center for the Elderly, a part of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, is described.