Mental Health Practice in Geriatric Health Care Settings

Mental Health Practice in Geriatric Health Care Settings emphasizes the major research and clinical findings realized in five years of research on mental health issues in older urban medical patients, many of whom represent minority groups. Chapters cover the high comorbidity of health and mental health problems in geriatric patients, neuropsychological (or cognitive) assessment, depression, alcohol abuse in health care settings, emerging behavioral medicine issues, and family relations and their tie to medical settings. As a practitioner, you’ll find this book helps your practice by representing the first assessment and treatment techniques normed and validated on minority elderly. If you’re a professional working in the mental health system, you’ll see how to expand your services to health care markets.

Mental Health Practice in Geriatric Health Care Settings devotes three chapters to neuropsychological assessment--first, a review of major principles; second, a new test battery for minorities; and third, extensive review on how to use test results in clinical decision making. Other chapters provide valuable information on:

• the analysis of outcomes for one thousand 60--103-year-olds
• a new validated behavioral treatment method for depression
• methods of detection and treatment of alcohol abuse
• emerging issues in behavioral medicine, including competency assessments; anxiety and pain disorders; and shaping the referral process
• family relations and health care, including caregiving and nursing home placement
• nursing home consultation and survival strategies in health care systems
  
  As Author Peter A. Lichtenberg describes in the Introduction, each chapter in Mental Health Practice in Geriatric Health Care Settings is multidisciplinary, empirically and statistically investigated, and focused upon urban elderly. “In addition, the major objectives are to provide clinicians with new understandings and new assessment and treatment knowledge to utilize in their practices. Finally, this book is hoped to provide clinicians [with] information about emerging trends in the field, and effective strategies for practice in healthcare settings.”

Peter A. Lichtenberg, PhD, ABPP, is Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Wayne State University School of Medicine and Associate Director of Rehabilitation Psychology and Neuropsychology at the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan.