C. Residential integration of mentally able and elderly mentally ill patient

Conclusions

Decisive action needs to be taken in regard to the housing needs of deinstitutionalized elderly chronically ill patients. Specifically, present housing trends toward random integration of geriatric ex-patients with well old people is at best highly questionable. While it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that residential integration of this kind can never succeed under any circumstances, it is quite plain that random placements in mixed residential settings often do not provide an optimum living environment for either the well or confused elderly. Factors that heighten the frequent behavioral incompatibility in such settings include the pervasiveness of social prejudices against the mentally ill, the lack of resocialization of patients before discharge, and poor hospital monitoring and follow-up.

Dumping of geriatric mental patients into the community should be slowed. If in the likelihood budgetary constraints prove not to make this possible, federal, state, and local governments should at the very least provide supportive services and monitoring of integrated ex-patients to mitigate the effects of the behavioral conflict. In the meantime, greater empirical efforts should be made to develop a better understanding of the conditions under which behavioral conflict between the two elderly populations in question are most acute. In addition, empirical efforts in the future should try to find means through which such conflict can be minimized. This refers especially to the refinement of a residential selection methodology that will enable one to define an elderly ex-patient's adjustive capacity and to identify the most appropriate living environment as well.