This volume represents the proceedings of a Symposium on Psychopharmacology and the Aging Patient, held at Duke University, May 29-31, 1972. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development and the Department of Psychiatry at Duke. This Symposium was the first in a series of conferences which will be devoted variously to preclinical and clinical pharmacology of the different groups of psychotropic drugs, especially as they relate to the problems of the elderly patient and to the special considerations that must be given in theory and in practice...

The "aging" of the world population is by now a well-recognized phenomenon. It has become a matter of concern to the social planner and deliverer of services, as weil as to the clinician. On aper capita basis, the aged-that is those 65 and older-appear in outpatient health care facilities at a rate wh ich is approximately fifty percent greater than their adult peers, stay about three times as long in general medical and surgical facilities, and represent more than 90 percent of the long-term-care beds in the United States. In addition, at a time when they represented approximately 10 percent...

This volume offers a critical evaluation of seven major paradigms in psychiatry that have made significant contributions to our current under standing of human behavior and psychiatric disorder. It was stimulated by a meeting held in November, 1978. We met at Salishan Lodge, Oregon, to discuss some of the theoretical orientations in behavioral sciences which serve as a base for contemporary psychopathology. Each major paradigm is represented by both an advocate as well as a critic. Advocates of a position had each agreed to be criticized by an individual who may not have been particularly...