Someone hit a nurse. One woman abruptly pinches another patient's face and yells curses. Another breaks into loud, gasping sobs for no apparent reason.
Agitation keeps still others awake all night.
A geriatric psychiatrist employed to care regularly for nursing home residents like these because he is specially trained in treatments to calm, even prevent, such problems. Although up to 80 percent of the nation's 1.6 million nursing home residents have a mental illness, mostly dementia or depression, experts say few nursing homes provide proper psychiatric care crucial to seniors' quality of life. These are largely forgotten psychiatric hospitals. They are not in any way prepared to take care of mental health problems,'' said Dr. William Reichman, president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. The group is beginning a campaign to change that by modeling care on practices like Anderson's.