Psychiatric Hospitalization of Older Adults

Abstract

Using data gathered for 4,377 patients hospitalized on either a specialty geropsychiatric unit or a general psychiatric inpatient unit, over a six year period (1982-1987), the present study compares younger patients to older patients on diagnostic, demographic, and service data. From these comparisons emerge a number of diagnostic and service related differences indicative of fairly dramatic differences in clinical presentation and treatment delivery. Patients over 55 years old from both the general units (n = 530) and the geropsychiatric unit (n = 653) are also compared in the analysis. Differences between these two groups included significantly longer length of stays for the specialty unit, more frequent diagnosis of depression and dementia in the specialty unit, and a higher frequency of character pathology or personality disorder in the general unit. Patients were significantly older in the specialty unit as well. Implications of these findings are discussed.