Lesson 20: Other Psychiatric Conditions

Attention

We need to make sure a we meet a person where they are at.
We do not know what their prior experiences have been nor their current struggles.
We need to approach them with kindness, respect and empathy.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

  • Creatively express information related to Other Psychiatric Conditions among the elderly

Teaching

This lesson is to get you thinking about other mental health concerns that can arise among older adults. These include:

  • Somatoform Disorders

Somatoform disorders are presentations where physical symptoms worry a patient, there is no organic pathology to explain them, but reassurance fails. They represent a murky borderland between medicine and psychiatry and understanding has not been helped by the plethora of terms used in this area. A typical scenario would be a 68-year-old woman who was recently widowed complaining to a general practitioner of headache, trouble sleeping, tiredness and muscle pain. Blood tests are negative but the patient says “there must be something wrong”. Faced with uncertainty, clinicians may easily fall back on a fruitless path of investigations and referrals. There is plenty of knowledge regarding somatoform disorders among younger people (who have fewer physical illnesses), but much less regarding older people. (Sheehan, B., 2006 http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/1745509X.2.6.1035?journalCode=ahe)

Read website: Undifferentiated Somatoform Disorder

Read the following brief web article: Helping an Older Loved One with a Personality Disorder

  • Sleep Disorders

View the following presentation by The National Sleep Foundation: Sleep and Aging Well

  • Sexual Function and Dysfunction

Read the following online article: Sexual Dysfunction in the Elderly: Age or Disease?

Assessment

Lesson 20 Assignment (Discussion)

Here is the situation...you are a rehabilitation professional and you have been tasked with designing a presentation to attract and educate young CNAs who are going to be working at a local long-term care facility.

Select ONE of the disorders that is outlined in this lesson and design a presentation. Below you find information about the apps that you can use to help you with this project. Whatever tool you decide to use, your final submission needs to be a presentation with slides and voice over. The voice over is YOU talking as if you were giving a presentation on the slides.

NOTE: This "Assignment" actually appears as a Discussion...when you have completed your Presentation movie, copy the URL into a discussion post. View and comment on each other's presentations. The grade, however, will not be a function of the posting, but of the quality of the Presentation alone. I'm looking for creativity and educational impact.

This assignment has you using the following apps: Keynote, PowerPoint, iMovie and YouTube.

  1. You will create this presentation using your favorite tools on your iPad (or PC if you prefer). You can use Keynote or PowerPoint.
  2. Whatever tool you decide to use, your final submission needs to be a presentation with slides and voice over. The voice over is YOU talking as if you were giving a presentation on the slides.
  3. You then need to turn this document (slide show) into a movie. You will create a movie file using iMovie. You can use iMovie to make modifications if you like.
  4. Once completed in iMovie you will need to upload it to YouTube. Your presentation must not be submitted as a PowerPoint or Keynote file...it has to be submitted as a link to a movie that is ONLINE.

This assignment will be lots of fun for you creative types!