The elderly in the mental health services of twenty-one European pilot study areas.

In a WHO project: Mental Health Services in Pilot Study Areas, 21 centers in 16 European countries collected a cohort of 200 consecutive new out-, day- and inpatients in 1979/1980 and followed them up for a period of 2 years. Since in most countries the elderly constitute a rapidly growing proportion of the population, with increasing demands on the mental health services, the collected data concerning the elderly were examined in detail. The results show that it is possible to study elderly people in care with data from a more general study. There are considerable differences among the elderly in the use of mental health services in the various areas, which can only be partly explained by differences in the age distribution of the various populations. The diagnostic distribution of elderly patients, and the type and amount of care delivered within the same diagnostic group, differ widely from area to area. Trieste offers a good example of day care as an alternative to inpatient care, even for elderly patients with organic psychosis.