Psychosocial and functional assessment of elders can reveal the presence of anxiety, depression and substance abuse. All of these which create giant, holes in an older person’s safety net. Substance abuse can be alcohol abuse or drugs. A physician many times prescribes multiple medication that can be abused by elders who suffer from depression and/or anxiety.Multiple physicians, can prescribe the same medications, if the older person is involved with what you call polypharmacy or getting the same prescription for from multiple doctors who do not know other doctors wrote the same prescriptions. Electronic medical records are a way to address this but not fail safe unless universal, as in true in the VA world wide.
Find out about assessment tools used by geriatric care managers and aging professional for assessing alcohol abuse, medication abuse, anxiety and depression on this segment of attorney Ramsey Bahwey who interviewed me recently on his You Tube show, You Money Your Life about elder issues. Remember this is a 2 minutes interview and brief snapshot of what it takes me multiple lectures to cover. To learn more about psychosocial assessment visit my GCM You Tube channel
