Abstract
Current demographic trends in the industrial world bring new challenges. One of them is treatment of psychiatric disorders in senior citizens.
Due to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic changes brought about by age, usage of psychopharmaceuticals in old to very old patients has its specifics that are often overlooked. We have to deal not only with a range of adverse effects, which are accentuated by advanced age, but also with questions about efficacy of these drugs, the ratios between risks and benefits and intricate interactions with other drugs.
The article tries to map the pitfalls of using psychopharmaceuticals in the elderly segment of psychiatric patients