NYAPRS Note: This brief letter to the editor from Western NY highlights a systemic problem in the nation’s care of mental health recipients. Basic access accommodations in treatment settings are often not provided, and social determinants such as community inclusion and meaningful life engagement are not designed with elderly in mind.
Letter: Seniors Need Access to Psychiatric Care
Buffalo News; Celia White, Letter to the Editor, 10/15/2014
Western New York offers very little support for inpatient geriatric psychiatric care. This is unacceptable.
The elderly are more inclined to depression than other sectors of the population, are of higher risk of suicide and often take many medications whose interactions and side effects can provoke psychosis and other agitated behavior.
According to the demographics noted from the 2010 Census on the Erie County Department of Senior Services site, 21.5 percent of the population of Erie County is 60 years or older (197,365 individuals); 8.1 percent of the resident population is 75 years or older (74,435); Erie County’s 60-year plus population has grown from 14.5 percent of the total county population in 1970 to 21.5 percent in 2010.
A recent experience of an elderly person at Erie County Medical Center’s comprehensive psychiatric emergency program revealed that this facility was unequipped to deal with a person who is frail, slow moving, semi-continent and unable to ambulate without a cane.
There are no emergency pull cords, guard rails in the bathroom, or any way to call for staff. The only place to lie down was a rubber mattress that was four inches above the floor, impossible to get down to or up from again. The in-patient unit at ECMC has only 18 beds.
Please consider this a plea for help from all sons, daughters, caregivers and mental health professionals in Western New York. Establish and support a properly outfitted geriatric psychiatric care unit. We must do better in caring for our seniors in every way, including their mental health.