老年期の心身症(ライフサイクルと心身症)
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概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
As it is not unusual for us to reach age 80 or 90 and older, psychosomatic medicine needs to tackle the problems of this new generation. Medical characteristics of the elderly can be summerized as follows : (1) they are living on the past history of accumulated diseases, (2) symptomatic characteristics are ofen atypical, (3) etiological findings are multifactorial and multidimensional which require dynamic evaluations, (4) physical disorders are apt to cause delirium and psychiatric symptoms. In the elderly, physical symptoms are caused and influenced by psychological problems, particularly by experiences of loss. What have highly developed medical and diagnostic techniques brought about to the elderly? Numerous incurable diseases which had been given up in the past have now become treatable. Also the diagnosis and management of chronic diseases can be made more precisely in general medical facilities. As the result, under these conditions, new problems have occurred in relation to the quality of life in the elderly which lay their lives under strict medical managements ignoring their wills. High-grade technical development naturally has brought about specialization of medicine. Consequently the elderly are more often pronounced to be "abnormal". Their anxiety and distrust in medicine are intensified. We should recognize the importance of each family doctor integrating various kinds of high grade medical information offered by specialists. Finally, the important theme of geriatric medicine today is delirium (acute brain syndrome). Particularly delirium induced by psychological as well as physical and medicational factors must be borne in the minds of all physicians.
- 日本心身医学会の論文
- 1994-03-01