Research on Late-Life Depression and Dementia Care: Across Disciplines, Across Settings

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue is to highlight advances in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary care for older adults suffering from depression and/or dementia from the perspective of AAGP (American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry) members. The AAGP term “members” (formerly known as “affiliate members”) refers to nonpsychiatrists in contrast with “psychiatrist members” (formerly known as “full members”). The rationale for this issue emerged from a discussion at the 2008 AAGP annual convention in Orlando, FL among the (then) affiliate members of the organization regarding the importance of cross-disciplinary work and our role as participants in an organization composed primarily of one discipline, i.e. geriatric psychiatry. Members uniformly agreed that we contributed meaningfully to geriatric psychiatry (as evidenced by the number of cross-disciplinary symposia presented), and that we similarly benefited considerably from being members of a psychiatric organization. AAGP’s 1990 original decision to allow nonpsychiatrists to become affiliate members and the most recent influential decision to allow them to participate fully as members of the organization are instrumental steps towardmoving the geriatric mental health field in a cross-disciplinary direction. The 2008 discussion then turned to the growing recognition by all disciplines of the importance of crossdisciplinary research collaboration in geriatric mental health. In particular, two approaches to cross-disciplinary collaboration are highlighted: multidisciplinary research, in which scholars from different disciplines work, independently or sequentially, in a shared project but retain the methods and concepts of their field, and interdisciplinary research in which scholars work, interactively or jointly, toward a common aim integrating their divergent perspectives. Thus, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, primary care providers, neurologists, sociologists, and others are working together to understand the etiology of late-life psychiatric disorders, to modify systems of care and improve access to treatment, and create methods for reconceptualizing late-life mental illness to inform the development of better prevention strategies and treatments. It was the consensus of the group in 2008 to highlight these achievements, particularly by AAGP members, in a special issue in the primary journal of the organization. The authors of the invited articles and commentary come from ten disciplines (education, epidemiology, health economy, internal medicine, nursing, public health, occupational therapy, psychiatry, psychology, and social work). To select potential authors, we initially identified 134 nonpsychiatrists investigators whose grants focused on unipolar late-life depression and dementia care and were funded between 2003 and 2008 by NIH Institutes (Aging, Mental Health, Drug Abuse, Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Nursing Research, and Environmental Health Science), the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Hartford Foundation, the National Alliance for Research on Depression and Schizophrenia, and/or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.