ABSTRACT
Because of the demographic changes taking place inWestern societies, late-life mental disorders have become and will remain of constantly growing importance for mentalhealth services (1,2). The category ‘‘late-onset mental disorder’’ (LOMD), as Berrios (3) pointed out, names a group of psychiatric conditions whose only common feature is their (putatively) higher incidence in old age. The concept is clear, but LOMD, per se, is of little help in the diagnosis of the conditions underlying the disorder. At the same time, recent research suggests that prevalence of bipolar disorders, in general, has been underestimated for a long time (4-7), and the knowledge of bipolar disorder in the elderly is, therefore, sparse and many questions remain open. There are several reasons for this:
There is considerable heterogeneity as to when ‘‘late life’’ begins. Some studies on late-life mania or late-life bipolar disorders have used a threshold of 60 years (1,8,9), others, 65 years (10-12), and still others, even as early as 50 years (13). Obviously, this makes studies difficult to compare.
