PubMed HealthSearch

Biomedical subjects

T Arie

Publications and source records attributed to T Arie.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Incidence of dementia: preliminary findings from the Nottingham Longitudinal Study of Activity and Ageing.

In a 4-year follow-up of 1,042 randomly sampled elderly people (aged 65+), levels of dementia were assessed using a two-phase case finding procedure (screening followed by clinical interview) among survivors. Clinical information on those not re-interviewed was provided by death certificates, hospital case notes or postal questionnaires. The unweighted 4-year cumulative incidence of dementia was 4.3%, with age-specific rates of 0.9, 2.8, 5.2, 9.0 and 8.7% for the age groups 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84, and 85-89, respectively.

Activities of Daily Living

UK survey of psychiatric services for the elderly: direction for developing services.

As an important step in health care planning for the elderly, a systematic descriptive study of ten psychogeriatric services was undertaken in the United Kingdom. A definite trend emerged of a reduction in the number of hospital beds as community services developed. Health authorities tended to establish a clinical base in general hospitals rather than in mental hospitals. The recent effect of the rapid growth of the private nursing home sector is also described. Some rough guidelines are provided for the basic resources needed to establish a comprehensive service including one assessment bed and one day place per 1,000 elderly persons; the number of long-stay beds depends on the number of places available in the private sector. While the Canadian health care system differs in some fundamental ways from that in the UK, the principles and guidelines derived from the UK experience may be applied to meet the psychiatric needs of the elderly in Canada.

Aged

Psychogeriatrics.

Psychogeriatrics--the psychiatry of old age--became an official specialty in the NHS in 1989. Until the 1960s interest in the mental disorders of old age had been largely confined to research, but today special psychiatric services for old people are widely established, and the care of mentally ill old people is recognized as a major issue by professional workers, governments and the lay public, not only in developed countries but also in the Third World. Britain has led this movement.

Aged

Prevalence, frequency, and duration of hypnotic drug use among the elderly living at home.

Details of consumption of hypnotic drugs derived from a nationally representative sample of elderly people were analysed in terms of the prevalence, duration, and likely frequency of use. Of 1020 randomly selected subjects aged 65 and over 16% (166) reported using (mainly benzodiazepine) hypnotic drugs, and of these 89% reported having taken such a drug the night before the interview. Most of these users (73%) had been taking hypnotic drugs for more than one year, with 25% reporting drug use for more than 10 years. These results suggest that for most elderly users of hypnotic drugs, patterns of consumption encourage the development of cumulative effects and benzodiazepine dependence.

Aged

Fall in admission rate of old people to psychiatric units.

The numbers of the elderly, and particularly the very old, have been increasing and continue to increase rapidly; but admission rates of old people to psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales suddenly started to fall in 1970. They were still generally falling in 1974 (the most recent year for which figures are available). There is no evidence that the incidence of dementia has suddenly fallen, or that expansion of extramural or other non-psychiatric services is everywhere coping with the severely demented. It is probably becoming more difficult for demented people to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals that are often still overcrowded, in view of the greater scrutiny of institutional care that has become established since the Ely Report of 1969. If this is so the cost to the demented and those who care for them of the undoubted improvements in conditions in psychiatric hospitals needs to be counted.

Aged

Psychiatric service for the elderly: how many beds?

Reported here is a cohort study of five years' bed usage in the Goodmayes Psychiatric Unit for Old People. Patients first admitted in 1970 continued to use beds, by readmission or by continuing stay, over the next four years; subsequent cohorts of admissions made correspondingly extended use of beds. Bed-usage by men appears now to have stabilized, whilst for women it is still rising. Over the first six years the bed complement was reduced by 40%, despite an increase in referrals of over 40%; this is because the Unit's style of work prevented newly admitted patients from accumulating in beds made available by deaths. It looks as if in future not only will patients who die by replaced by new female admissions but more beds will be needed for these admissions. The present bed-usage is just within the Government's recommended guidelines, and the local issues are considered in the context of national policy.

Aged