Wither old age psychiatry?

Abstract

I think it is fair to say that the UK was one of the first countries to develop dedicated old age psychiatry services. The first such documented service was set up in the Crichton Royal Hospital in Dumfries in 1958 (Robinson, 1965). This arose after decades of recognition that older people with mental illness get a raw deal if they are managed in adult services (Hilton, 2012). Following a slow start, specific old age services began to burgeon. The discipline got recognition as a separate faculty in the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1988, and throughout the eighties and nineties, virtually all areas of the UK developed their own specialist old age psychiatry services; multi-disciplinary teams working with people over the age of 65 generally providing community-based services with input to people's homes as the norm.