Special considerations in integrating elderly patients into a general hospital psychiatric unit

Geriatric patients with psychiatric disorders are highly treatable in an acute general hospital setting, but they require special attention in assessment, treatment, and discharge planning. Assessment must include the active involvement of a broad multidisciplinary team led by the psychiatrist. In the treatment process, staff must stay aware of the psychiatric symptoms, which may be obscured by medical problems, and should take therapeutic advantage of the transference issues that an age-mixed population can generate. Discharge planning must attend to resistances and the realistic dilemmas that are unique to the geriatric population. In discussing these issues, the authors describe how a university hospital inpatient unit with a full age range of adult patients adapted its milieu and staffing to treat a larger proportion of geriatric patients.