[Psychiatry in elderly prisoners]

Context: The high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in prison and the aging of inmates should lead to the consideration of gerontopsychiatry in the prison environment.

Objective: This review aims to emphasize the clinical characteristics and associated comorbidities of elderly prisoners with psychiatric disorders. We examined the international literature in September 2013 and performed the literature search with PubMed electronic database using the following Mesh headings: "prisons", "prisoners", "geriatric psychiatry", "geriatric assessment", "geriatric nursing".

Results: Fourteen studies were retained by the literature search strategy and were included in the qualitative analysis. More than one out of two elderly prisoners (>60 year-old) suffer from a psychiatric disorder. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the first psychiatric disorder diagnosed among elderly prisoners, affecting 30 to 50% of them. Personality disorders are also very common demonstrating a prevalence of about 30%. Psychotic disorders concern 5% of the elderly prisoners and thus largely exceed the prevalence in the general population. Furthermore, stress events are frequent in prison and might precipitate or worsen psychiatric disorders. This review highlights the difficulties and complexities of care plans and management for the elderly in prison.

Conclusion: The situation of elderly prisoners with psychiatric disorders is extremely worrying. In addition, both the aging of the population and the lengthening of incarcerations increase the number of elderly prisoners, widely exposed to psychiatric disorders, and thus will probably worsen these issues in the future.