Elderly Mental Health: A Positive Perspective

I want to ask you something. Given such statistics, why are millions of our nation’s elderly deprived of adequate mental health care? There’re numerous factors accounting for this apparent state of apathy and indifference wards the unmet mental health needs of the elderly. It would stand to reason that a society that places such great emphasis on youth and the importance of looking young does not lend enthusiastic support to better mental health care for the geriatric population.

For administrators confronted with budgetary restraints, it has had been cast aside, on the basis that they are like the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the National Mental Health Association, Disabled Americans, and Developmentally Disabled Children, there had been very little national attention directed to the quality and quantity of mental health services available to the nation’s elders. Attempts to organize older people struggling with psychiatric disorders combined with physical impairments have met with minimal success. Fact, local attempts to engage adult sons and daughters have not generated positive results. Very often, television and movie portrayals of characters labeled mentally ill are frightening and powerful sources of mental illness misinformation.

It’s therefore extremely important to have alternative TV programming that helps to ‘reeducate’ people about what mental illness is and how it can be effectively treated.

For the older generation, movies like The Snakepit and Psycho have left lasting negative perceptions of people experiencing psychological distress.

Besides, the media rarely produces dramas depicting people coping with feelings of depression or anxiety who are not violent, nor do they have any regular programming that provides basic mental health information. Plenty of elders resist treatment for depression and similar disorders, as their association with mental illness is depending on images frequently propagated by the mass media and popular culture. In most instances, older adults do not appear at a CMHC unless they are brought by a relative or look, there’s an acute cr that requires an emergency visit. Remember, even on those visits, few CMHCs have staff members that are responsive or knowledgeable about the special needs of this population. On the attitudes and assumed efficiency of planners and funders in the private and public sectors, practices and policies pertaining to the organization of elderly service delivery have not been on the basis of actual experiential data.

Illustration of this approach is the assumption that older consumers will selfrefer to community mental health centers for public health education campaign to sensitize legislators and the general public if funds were available. Look, there’s noone reason why older people with mental health problems was overlooked and underserved. With that said, in recent years, the aging agencies are more concerned with ‘long term’ care while the mental health systems in many states have focused on developing programs for the seriously and persistently mentally ill. Conflicting priorities led any system to focus on what they regard as their primary functions rather than addressing collaborative programs and strategies.

At the state and local level, mostly there’s a question which exactly service organization -the county aging agency or the county mental health system -is responsible for the mental health care of the elderly.

Look, there’s a large disparity in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement between psychiatric care and medical care.

Despite pressure from national professional organizations, there is no significant improvement in this area from the Health Care Finance Corporation,the agency that administers the Medicare program. Co payments for consumers are higher than for standard medical care, not only are professionals reimbursed at lower rates. Now this has deterred many prospective psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists from considering careers in geriatric mental health. Now please pay attention. Medicare has specifically limited reimbursement to all the disciplines engaged in treating older adults, since its enactment in 1985. So it is another drawback for older persons considering mental health treatment.a certain amount these successful programs have initiated or implemented one or more of the following.

Mostly there’re programs that have used innovative ideas to achieve a degree of success, there’s still a perfect deal to be learned about interventions to better ease the psychic distress of older Americans. Lots of us know that there are innovative programs that are either currently operational or under consideration in a couple of states, while the majority of these barriers continue to restrict improvement and expansion of elderly mental health services. Trudy Persky,, has had a fourdecade career in human services, including 12 years as Project Director for Mental Health and Aging in the Philadelphia Office of Mental Health. Fact, she is now a consultant on mental health and aging problems. Consequently, elders account for only 7 all percent inpatient psychiatric services, 6 percent of community mental health services, and 9 percent of private psychiatric care. Few seem to receive proper care and treatment for these mental illnesses. Less than 3 all percent Medicare reimbursement is for the psychiatric treatment of older patients.

It’s estimated that 18 to 25 elders percent are in need of mental health care for depression, anxiety, psychosomatic disorders, adjustment to aging, and schizophrenia.

Undoubtedly it’s also a distressing reality that the suicide rate of the elderly stands at an alarming 21 percent, the highest of all age groups in the United States.

Almost any day 17 older individuals kill themselves. Connections between primary care and social services are limited as are links with primary care and mental health services for older adults. Big reason for so it is the limited and parallel funding the agencies receive, that does not encourage the sharing of resources. Known many service organizations are deeply concerned about maintaining their autonomy and their funding -attitudes which do not foster interagency collaboration. Therefore, most agencies continue to function in isolation from one other, there is unanimous agreement about the value of communication and of streamlined intake procedures. Notice, despite their glaring weaknesses in this regard, the HMOs remain an attractive option to the elderly because of the elimination of the costs for supplementary Medicare insurance and the various additional benefits -the reimbursement for glasses and prescriptions, for the sake of example -that many HMOs offer. Now this data greatly underscores the importance of early detection by health professionals and caregivers.

Accordingly a 1990 elderly study suicides in the Chicago area found that 20 percent of the suicide victims had seen their primary care physicians within 24 hours of their suicide, 41 percent within seven days, 84 percent within 30 days.

a conundrum for advocates requesting additional mental health funding is the response from state funders that look, there’s no point in additional allocations since they believe the elderly don’t take advantage of the services already available.

It’s difficult to convince the people in control of the purse strings that the reason existing services aren’t more frequently used is that the programs are not responsive to the needs of older consumers in the first instance. Over the last decade there is a striking number of articles in professional journals and the public press attesting to the high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the nation’s elderly population.

Even though adults 60 age years and older constitute 13 percent of the United States population, their use of inpatient and outpatient mental health services falls far below expectations.

This tendency is reinforced by physicians, who often attribute symptoms to the aging process.

Medical practice day does not usually allocate time for the detailed medical and social history that should encourage a more accurate diagnosis. Most of these physicians have limited training in the care and management of geriatric patients. Write elders tend to assume that complaints similar to sleep disturbances, changes in appetite, and mood differences are about physical problems. That said, this makes the current lack of adequate mental health care particularly insidious since neither the elderly person nor the health care provider may recognize the symptoms. In no other age group is the combination and interrelationship of physical, social, and economic problems as significant as with the elderly. Plenty of elders withdraw from service feeling overwhelmed by the long waits and complex procedures.