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In this timely volume, the most experienced investigator of psychiatric patients in nursing homes in this country, Dr. Bernard Stotsky, has made a major contribution to our knowledge in this increasingly important area of social psychiatry.
Aided by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Stotsky and his staff of able clinicians, researchers, caseworkers, ministers and others report succinctly and anthoritatively on a host of subjects which are even more significant today then when they did their studies from 1964 to 1967. The State Hospital Systems in the past there years have made admission increasingly difficult for the elderly and the aged who paradoxically are on the increase numerically. And the nursing homes are being flooded with requests for admissions from many psycho-geriatric patients.
This book will undoubtedly serve as the most complete encyclopedic reference source for hard data for some time to come as there is generally more loose verbiage about the care of the aged than hard facts.
Through the medium of controlled clinical and research studies answers were sought to a number of specific questions. The author concluded that
Nursing homes are a significant community mental health resource for aged patients.
Incontinent, depressed, withdrawn, confused, disoriented and hypochondriacal patients are all acceptable to more than 90 % of nursing homes.
Suidical, hostile, aggressive, assaultive, destructive and boisterous patients, as well as those who wander
excessively, smoke in bed, or have severe alcoholic or drug problems are not acceptable to more than half of nursing home administrators.
Patients who are assaultive, treatening, destructive, noisy, negativistic and prone to wandering are feared by the staff, do poorly in nursing homes and should not be placed in one until these behaviours have subsided for more than six months. Such patients more frequently die in the nursing home than those able to attend to their daily routine activities