Psychogeriatrics

By 2030, one in six people in the world will be 60 or older.
Loneliness and social isolation are important risk factors for developing mental health problems in later life.
One in six elderly people are victims of acts of mistreatment, often at the hands of caregivers.
Around 14% of people aged 60 and over live with a mental disorder.
Mental disorders among the elderly represent 10.6% of the total number of years lived with disability for this age group

Around 14% of people aged 60 and over live with a mental disorder. These conditions represent 10.6% of total disability among older people. The most common mental health problems among older adults are depression and anxiety. Globally, around a quarter of suicide deaths occur among people aged 60 or over.

Mental health issues in older adults are rarely recognized and treated, and the stigma surrounding them can make people reluctant to seek help.

Indeed, the social representation of old age in our contemporary world is cruel and complex: on the one hand, we seek to obtain a label of “aging well”, and advances in medicine help us to ward off death; on the other hand, we stigmatize elderly people who are considered to too frequently accumulate handicaps and deficits whose therapeutic efforts are often in vain and costly... The image sent back is terrible and we understand the isolation in which certain people elderly people lock themselves away .

TOGETHER LET’S FIGHT

AGAINST THE ISOLEMENT OF

THE ELDERLY.

DONATE

MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
SENIORS

PROMOTION AND PREVENTION

Mental health promotion and prevention strategies for older adults focus on supporting healthy aging. This means creating physical and social environments that promote well-being and enable people to do what is important to them, despite loss of capabilities.

TREATMENT AND CARE

Prompt recognition and treatment of mental health issues is essential. This should be consistent with standards for integrated care for older people, which are community-based and focused on long-term care for older people with mental health problems and declining intrinsic abilities, but also on education and training of caregivers and support for them .

FIGHT AGAINST ISOLATION

Many older people with mental disorders are victims of stigmatization which delays access to care, impacts self-esteem, and alters social relationships. We must work to ensure that this no longer happens, particularly through intergenerational projects.

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PSYCHIC DISORDERS

Anxiety disorders

It is the most common psychiatric manifestation in the elderly. Most often secondary to a somatic condition, it can also be organized into a generalized anxiety disorder, with hypochondriacal worries and associated physical symptoms. Panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder are rarer.

Agoraphobia can take an atypical form, that of the fear of falling, whether the subject has already fallen or not, and can lead to progressive confinement at home then, as in the song by Jacques Brel, "from the bed to the window , then from bed to chair and then from bed to bed.”

Hysterical disorders are marked by emotional greed, multiple somatic complaints and requests for care that are never satisfied or frustrated, often a source of rejection from family or caregivers. Conversive phenomena are possible and can take the form of a dementia syndrome (Ganser syndrome)

Psychogeriatrics

MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES SENIORS

PROMOTION AND PREVENTION Mental health promotion and prevention strategies for older adults focus on supporting healthy aging. This means creating physical and social environments that promote well-being and enable people to do what is important to them, despite loss of capabilities.

FIGHT AGAINST ISOLATION Many older people with mental disorders are victims of stigmatization which delays access to care, impacts self-esteem, and alters social relationships. We must work to ensure that this no longer happens, particularly through intergenerational projects.

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PSYCHIC DISORDERS

MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
SENIORS

PROMOTION AND PREVENTION

Mental health promotion and prevention strategies for older adults focus on supporting healthy aging. This means creating physical and social environments that promote well-being and enable people to do what is important to them, despite loss of capabilities.

FIGHT AGAINST ISOLATION

Many older people with mental disorders are victims of stigmatization which delays access to care, impacts self-esteem, and alters social relationships. We must work to ensure that this no longer happens, particularly through intergenerational projects.