Late age affective diseases, psychometric evaluation and psychopharmacotherapy

Improving the effectiveness and safety of the treatment of affective disorders in patients of late age currently remains an urgent problem. The demographic situation in the world shows an increasing tendency to an aging population, the number of elderly people in the general population is constantly increasing. According to the literature, affective disorders at a later age are found with the same or greater frequency when compared with the incidence at a young age. Age-related changes in the affective disorder clinic lead to a decrease in the diagnostic significance of most psychometric scales. The structure of affective syndromes in elderly patients ceases to correspond to the set of symptoms in the scales, which leads to a decrease in the possibilities of screening diagnosis of affective disorders in this category of patients in non-psychiatric settings. The study of the questions of predicting the effectiveness of psychopharmacotherapy, the prevention of drug complications, and the prevention of the formation of pharmacoresistance (maximum “getting” into the symptoms “from the first drug”) for late patients is of particular relevance.