Geriatric psychiatry in the emergency department, II: Evaluation and treatment of geriatric and nongeriatric admissions.

The records of a hospital psychiatric emergency department were reviewed for elderly and middle-aged patients who were diagnosed with organic brain syndrome (OBS) or psychiatric disorder. These records were then compared with those of elderly patients from the medical emergency department. While elderly medical patients received routine physical evaluations and laboratory testing, elderly psychiatric patients with behavioral symptoms were often referred to psychiatry before they received tests necessary to differentiate physical disorders from functional psychiatric disorders. When tests were administered to psychiatric patients, many abnormal results were apparent, indicating the possible presence of physical disease. It is recommended that all elderly patients with psychiatric symptoms undergo adequate medical evaluations to screen for physical causes of the psychiatric symptoms.