ABSTRACT
Psychotic symptoms can occur in older people in the context of all major
mental illness and pharmacotherapy is a mainstay of treatment. This
chapter concentrates on drug treatment for older people with paranoid ill-
nesses that are not caused by a dementing illness, although older people
with dementia and affective illnesses are also often treated with anti-
psychotic drugs and the detailed information about these drugs is found
in this chapter. Within the context of dementia, anti-psychotic drugs are
often used for behavioural and psychiatric symptoms of dementia (BPSD),
as well as for psychosis in dementia. The only published trials of anti-
psychotic drugs that have been limited to older people have been in
people with dementia. These are discussed in Chapter 7. As there are no
trials that report the results in older people with paranoid illnesses, much
of the information here is inferred from work in younger people.
