Older Adults Related Content

Improving Quality of Life for Patients Starts With Supporting Caregivers

Dementia. The mere mention of cognitive decline is usually enough to send chills down the spines of older Americans and their family members. While there is broad recognition of the devastating impact of living with illnesses that include symptoms affecting memory and thinking, such as Alzheimer’s...

Using New Technology to Track Senior Health

Mounted on the wall in David’s room at an assisted living facility west of Boston is a small, white box. It emits a low hum, but otherwise, it is hard to know it is there. But, while people in the room may not notice the box, the box is noticing everything that goes on in the room. The box houses a...

Beloved Nurse Director Cindy Ruscitti, MSN, RN, Retires

On October 30, 2020, a beloved and respected nurse retired from McLean Hospital. Cindy Ruscitti, MSN, RN, the Older Adult Program’s nurse director, started working at McLean as a staff nurse on December 3, 1975. And—fortunately for its staff and patients—she continued to work at McLean for more than...

How Are Older Adults Coping With the Mental Health Effects of COVID-19?

Older adults are especially vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic—with higher risks of severe complications and death, and potentially greater difficulties accessing care and adapting to technologies such as telemedicine. A viewpoint article published in the Journal of the American...

New Possibilities for Parkinson’s Disease

A team of investigators from McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported that reprogramming a patient’s own skin cells to replace cells in the brain that are progressively lost during Parkinson’s disease (PD) is technically feasible. PD is the second most common...

Dementia: Addressing a Global Health Challenge

As Americans age and the incidence of dementia increases, McLean Hospital is embarking on a path to provide more specialized care for a subset of patients with the behavioral problems that accompany the advanced stages of the illness. According to the World Health Organization, mental health and...

Device Allows Clinicians to Safely Monitor Older Adults With COVID-19

Even with the best protocols in place, treating psychiatric patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 poses challenges for mental health care professionals. But what if there was a way to monitor patients from a safe distance? A team of clinicians from McLean Hospital’s Division of Geriatric...

At the Intersection of Medicine and Empathy

As a psychiatrist in charge on the Geriatric Psychiatry Inpatient Services at McLean, Alexis Freedberg, MD , often sees patients who are seeking mental health treatment for the first time in their lives. Older adults may experience age-related cognitive changes, such as dementia, or they may...

One Social Worker Found Her Heart and Her Home at McLean

Around the time Joan Gillis, MSW, LICSW , left the business world to start a family, her father had a stroke. “I found myself as the caregiver for my father and my children,” she said. Since then, helping both older adults and future generations has been central to her professional life. Caring for...

McLean’s SHAPE Course Promotes Healthy Brain Aging for Seniors

Starting in late April, the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at McLean Hospital will begin offering six-week courses to help older adults and their adult children find ways to age successfully and promote healthy brain function. Called “Successful Healthy Aging: Prevention and Education” (SHAPE)...

Alzheimer’s Disease: The Search for Hope

Love took center stage when Scott Cummings met Janet Morrison some 25 years ago in Pittsburgh. Both were theater professors at Carnegie Mellon University. Eventually, their careers led them to Massachusetts to take up similar positions at Boston College and Brandeis University. But recently, their...

Looking Toward the Future: Older Adults and Mental Illness

Through innovative initiatives and the integration of clinical care and research, Brent P. Forester, MD, MSc, chief of McLean’s Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, is looking to improve mental health care for older adults—something that is important now, more than ever as America’s population...