The prevention, early detection, & effective management of neurocognitive disorders in the elderly

世界人口史无前例的老龄化正在对医疗保健构成重大挑战，以满足患有阿尔茨海默病和S病等认知障碍的老年人的需求。与此同时，正在开发药物来预防这些疾病，或有效地治疗它们。我们的建议是对这些神经认知障碍的神经精神病学方面的全面尝试。我们小组正在努力更好地定义这些疾病的早期阶段，并研究使用最新的神经心理学和神经成像技术在早期阶段检测它们的方法。我们希望研究预防痴呆症的新药。由于缺乏初级保健医生在识别痴呆症方面的培训，许多痴呆症没有得到早期治疗，我们正在开发处理这个问题的方法。我们还在研究认知障碍在老年人事故和自杀中的作用，以及抑郁症的发展。我们正在确定精神障碍在这些患者护理中的作用，以及减轻疾病负担的方法。我们预计，这项研究将对澳大利亚针对这些疾病的卫生政策产生重大影响。我们还希望使我们的项目成为老年神经精神病学培训的首选中心。

The unprecedented greying of the world population is posing a major challenge to health care in meeting the needs of older individuals with cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer�s disease. At the same time, drugs are being developed to prevent these disorders, or to treat them effectively. Our proposal is a comprehensive attempt at dealing with the neuropsychiatric aspects of these neurocognitive disorders. Our group is endeavouring to better define the early stages of these disorders, and studying methods of detecting them at an early stage, using the latest neuropsychological and neuroimaging techniques. We wish to investigate new drugs for the prevention of dementia. Much of dementia is not treated early because of lack of training of primary care physicians in identifying dementia, and we are developing methods to deal with this problem. We are also examining the role of cognitive disorders in accidents and suicides in the elderly, and the development of depression. We are determining the role of psychiatric disorders in the care of these patients, and the methods of alleviating the burden of disease. We expect that this research will make a major impact on health policy for these disorders in Australia. We also hope to make our Program the premier centre for training in geriatric neuropsychiatry.