Target psychiatric syndromes in the hospitalised elderly

Abstract

Paying attention to differential ethiopathogenic diagnosis in psychiatry constitutes one of the bases of therapeutic success. A wrong causal attribution maintains the fundamental aggression without treatment and it may lead to prescription of unnecessary or inconvenient psychotropics. This general principle must be highlighted in the elderly because of their greater vulnerability to secondary mental disorders. Especially in the severely ill aged patient, psychiatric disturbances need a careful and systematic investigation of possible identifiable causes.

In order to facilitate this analysis, the present review brings up to date the ethiological factors associated to the most frequent and characteristic psychiatric disorders (target psychiatric syndromes) in the hospitalised elderly.