Geriatric psychiatry home treatment (GHT): A pilot study on outcomes following hospital discharge for depressive and delusional patients

Elderly people with mental health problems receive much worse outpatient care than younger people. Although the health-promoting factors are known, there are hardly any studies on effective biopsychosocial care models. A 1-year longitudinal study examined the effectiveness of the GHT presented below. For this purpose, 12 depressive and delusional patients discharged from inpatient gerontopsychiatric care received mental and social treatment and care at home for 1 year. Functionality was surveyed by means of the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (GAF) and psychiatric symptoms by means of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Subjective quality of life (QoL) was surveyed by means of the WHOQOL-BREF self-report questionnaire. The main findings were as follows: (1) no patient had to receive inpatient psychiatric care or be admitted to a nursing home during the study period; (2) mental QoL had improved significantly after 1 year; (3) functionality remained stable; (4) the BPRS scores did not deteriorate. We see this as confirmation that GHT is an effective instrument for extramural care of elderly people with psychiatric disorders. The limitations of the pilot study necessitate further studies to back up the findings.