Geriatric psychiatry

Geriatric psychiatry, also known as geropsychiatry, psychogeriatrics or psychiatry of old age, is a branch of medicine and a subspecialty of psychiatry dealing with the study, prevention, and treatment of neurodegenerative, cognitive impairment, and mental disorders in people of old age. Geriatric psychiatry as a subspecialty has significant overlap with the specialties of geriatric medicine, behavioural neurology, neuropsychiatry, neurology, and general psychiatry. Geriatric psychiatry has become an official subspecialty of psychiatry with a defined curriculum of study and core competencies. The origins of geriatric psychiatry began with Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist who first identified amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in a fifty-year-old woman he called Auguste D. These plaques and tangles were later identified as being responsible for her behavioural symptoms, short-term memory loss, and psychiatric symptoms. These brain anomalies would become identifiers of what later became known as Alzheimer's disease. The subspecialty of geriatric psychiatry originated in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. The geropsychiatric unit, the term for a hospital-based geriatric psychiatry program, was first introduced in 1984 by Norman White MD, when he opened New England's first specialized program at a community hospital in Rochester, New Hampshire. White is a pioneer in geriatric psychiatry, being among the first psychiatrists nationally to achieve board certification in the field. The prefix psycho- had been proposed for the geriatric program, but White, knowing New Englanders' aversion to anything psycho- lobbied successfully for the name geropsychiatric rather than psychogeriatrics. Diseases and disorders diagnosed or managed by geriatric psychiatrists include: Dementia Mild cognitive impairment Alzheimer's disease Vascular dementia Dementia with Lewy bodies Parkinson's disease Neuropsychiatric complications from stroke, multiple sclerosis Late-life presentations of psychiatric disorders Depression Melancholic depression Anxiety disorders Bipolar disorder Schizophrenia Personality disorders Medical-Psychiatric Disorders Delirium Catatonia Substance use disorder A geriatric psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the field of medical sub-specialty called geriatric psychiatrist.