Geriatric Mental Health Care: Lessons From a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on older adults with mental illness, and Geriatric Mental Health Care was conceived in response. This book, with its detailed descriptions of clinical and social innovations to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on a vulnerable population, represents an ongoing effort to address rapidly evolving health care needs. Because the authors worked on this book during the pandemic, the practices they describe have been tested and refined in the real world.

Introductory vignettes that serve to illustrate each chapter’s salient points, key takeaways that allow for quick reference, and multiple-choice questions that help reinforce learning are the hallmarks of Geriatric Mental Health Care. In addition to offering a historical perspective on the mental health effects of pandemics, the chapter authors delve into modern-day concerns that include inpatient geriatric psychiatry during a pandemic, telehealth models of care, health care staff concerns, and social determinants of health. The authors also explore the pandemic’s effects on research and the economy, analyzing the impact of nonclinical factors on the broader clinical care effort.

Although important strides have been made in the delivery of mental health care to older adult patients, very real challenges remain more than a year and a half after the pandemic’s emergence. Even as the world continues to grapple with the effects of the current pandemic, mental health professionals must prepare themselves to provide care under the trying conditions of what will likely be other pandemics in the future. These considerations make Geriatric Mental Health Care, and its purpose of sharing promising practices that other clinicians and systems can consider emulating, so urgent and necessary.