Elderly mental health care is an important issue that affects almost one in every five American adults who are in fact known to be affected by some form of mental illness or the other. These mental illnesses include suffering from dementia and psychosis, delirium as well as depression and schizophrenia.
The disturbing thing about elders suffering from these and other mental illnesses is that they can lose their cognitive abilities and their behavior too will change for the worse and their general ability to function normally too will be adversely affected.
Ignored and Brushed Under the Carpet
Among other reasons why elderly mental health care is required for seniors are disturbed sleep patterns as well as loss of appetite as well as mood swings. Unfortunately, elderly mental health care is a subject that is often ignored or brushed under the carpet because no one wants to deal with things such as mental illnesses though this ignorance or avoidance of providing suitable elderly mental health care can and does often lead seniors to commit suicide which is why specialized mental treatment is required for the elderly.
Elderly mental health care today suffers from many lacunae and among these lacunae is the fact the majority of elders suffering from mental ailments shirk from getting them treated. It is commonly found that such elders will suffer their condition in silence and are ready to put up with many discomforts rather than face the stigma of being known as being mentally disturbed.
Even the society in which we live in today does not respect or show dignity to those that are unfortunate enough to suffer from mental diseases. In fact, many mental health professionals too are worried about the condition of the elderly that suffer from mental problems and these beliefs in such professionals actually impairs their abilities to provide suitable elderly mental health care.
What's more, the medical fraternity too sometimes trips over in the kind of elderly mental health care they provide and negligence on their part is another obstacle that the elderly have to contend with. In fact, often mental diseases are written off by professionals as being just a case of an aging indicator and nothing more serious.
In today's day and age a worrying aspect to dealing with elderly health care needs is the fact that the cause of death in the twentieth century is radically different than what was common in the previous century. In the nineteenth century deaths were caused by acute as well as infectious ailments, though in these modern times the main killers are chronic as well as degenerative ailments of old age.
