Purpose: Older adults watch more television than younger people do. Television's role in mental health has been described in the general population, but less is known about how older adults think of television in the context of depression. Design and Methods: Using a semistructured interview created to help clinicians understand how older adults…

Interviewed 140 elderly medical patients and found that the measured 22 percent prevalence of mental impairment was not reflected in the patients' utilization of mental health services or in their presenting complaints to their physicians. Subsequent interviews with their physicians revealed inadequate recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of…

Family physicians may lack discriminatory ability to differentiate normal aging form disease states. To assess such ability, 53 aging-related indicators or symptoms were presented to 65 physicians in 3 family practice residency programs. Respondents classified each symptom as normal aging or disease. On average, residents classified 73.4% of…

Background: Gender bias has been reported in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a variety of illnesses. In the context of our 10-station fourth year Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation, we queried whether this could influence diagnosis in a geriatric case. Case writers hypothesized that, due to this bias, the female standardized…