Collaboration Between Department of Old Age Psychiatry and Nursing Homes

Dementia is a serious health problem showing an increasing prevalence rate with increasing age. In Norway, about 80% of nursing home patients have dementia. The mean age of nursing home residents in Norway is around 84 years. Disruptive and agitated behaviour affect 30-50% of all individuals with dementia at some point in the course of the illness. In addition, they have a combination of physical and psychological diseases which necessitates a close collaboration between different specialities in medicine and Old Age psychiatry. In collaboration with the communalities, our Old Age psychiatry services want to provide a new approach to this challenge and validate it on patient and personnel level.