Book Description

What do clinicians need to know to safely and effectively prescribe psychotropic medications to elderly patients? Clinicians can now turn to this definitive handbook for answers. Here, three experienced pharmacologists offer a true "how to" guide to prescribing medications in the geriatric population, drawing on their own clinical experience and reading of the literature in geriatric psychopharmacology. This concise handbook is replete with valuable advice (e.g., drug dosing, titration) for day-to-day clinical practice. Each chapter covers a major psychotropic class, detailing the pharmacology, clinical use, side effects, and treatment of selected syndromes and disorders, plus a unique quick-reference summary of prescribing data on selected drugs. Concluding chapters detail the treatment of substance-related disorders, movement disorders, and dementias and other cognitive syndromes in the elderly-in-depth discussions that are simply not available elsewhere. Written for residents, fellows, and clinicians in psychiatry and medicine who diagnose and treat psychiatric and neuropsychiatric conditions that can affect geriatric patients, this clinical reference can be used across all treatment settings for the elderly (e.g., inpatient, outpatient, day hospital, consultation, and nursing homes). Geriatric and general psychiatrists, geriatric medical specialists, internists and family practitioners, medical students and residents, and case managers and social workers-all will come to rely on this handy guide for the critical information needed to provide optimal care for our fast-growing population of elderly patients.