James M. Ellison, MD, MPH

Discover how advanced diagnostic tools enhance the accuracy of dementia assessments, leading to better treatment strategies and patient outcomes.

An important adverse effect of SRIs: their association with increased bleeding.

How can you communicate the diagnosis in a way that relieves suffering and helps patients and their caregivers prepare for the future?

The authors make the case for national education mandates from accreditation organizations and congressional support to require enhanced education of all clinicians who care for older adults.

A lively ongoing debate is examining the ethics and legality of age-based evaluation of clinicians.

“Doctor, will you prescribe medical marijuana for my mother? I think it might help her agitation better than the medication you gave her last visit.”

Depression can be accompanied by cognitive symptoms, but the nature of the relationship between these symptom categories is multifaceted.

In order for older patients to derive greater enjoyment from their later years, clinicians must take special care during evaluation, treatment, and follow up when working with this growing population.

Mood disorders in older adults are neither inevitable nor particularly resistant to treatment. With attention to the special needs of older patients during evaluation, treatment, and follow up, clinicians can help many patients derive greater enjoyment from their later years.

Placing black floor mats in front of exits to deter demented nursing home residents from dangerous wandering may pose ethical questions.

Of the 3 informative articles included in this special geriatric collection, 1 offers a perspective on the treatment of depression that does not focus on somatotherapy. The others remind us of 2 additional geriatric Ds of importance: drugs and driving.

When I was recently asked by a patient about the link between osteoporosis and SSRIs, I dimly recalled this topic’s emergence in a medical journal in 2007, its subsequent meander through several newsletters, and its gradual return to the bottom of my mental risk-assessment checklist.

One recent survey found that more than 1 in 4 patients who have mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were receiving cholinesterase inhibitors in Italian AD treatment centers even though these medications were being used "off-label."

On a hypothetical morning, you've arrived early at your office to answer e-mails and respond to prescription requests without interruptions. The following voice mail, left for you much earlier that day, awaits your attention: "Doctor, I need to discuss my mother's behavior with you. The medications she's taking might be calming her down during the days, but she's not okay at night."

Geriatric psychotherapy has begun to receive consistent and supportive attention in the psychiatric literature. Despite this growing interest in psychotherapy for older adults, studies of efficacy of either psychotherapy alone or of combined treatments for older patients are still limited in number, and more attention to the issue is needed.

The current climate of managed care has dramatically changed how psychiatrists deal with the issue of suicide. What should clinicians know, both about the safety and welfare of their patients and to protect themselves legally, when dealing with managed care companies in cases of potential suicidality?