Geriatric psychiatry consultations in a university hospital

A review was conducted of the records of 147 patients above the age of 60 in a 350-bed general university hospital for whom a request for consultations was made over a two-year period by a geriatric psychiatry division in a department of psychiatry. Findings were compared with those obtained by Mainprize and Rodin and by Ruskin. Most referrals in the present study were from internal medicine as they were in the other two studies. The principal reason for referrals in this and in Mainprize and Rodin's study was depression (48% and 37%, respectively) but not in Ruskin's study (10%). The primary DSM-III-R diagnoses of the referred patients in this study were affective disorder (27%), adjustment disorders (26%), and dementia (22%). Affective disorder was also the most frequent diagnosis in Ruskin's study. Psychotropic medication was the most frequently cited recommendation in all three studies.