IPA - Bulletin - Volume 17, Number 1 - Psychogeriatrics and the 21st Century: One World, One Discipline
IPA Bulletin
Editor's Note
Psychogeriatrics and the 21st Century:
One World, One Discipline
David Ames
It is a warm and unusually humid mid-January Melbourne evening as I type this editor’s note to the strains of Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony (the New World is splendid, but this is his best one). Global systems failed to implode a few days ago, much to my relief, and now we have four different digits in the year on the masthead of this issue. I’m inclined to believe this means we have started the 2000th year of the common era and the new century begins on 1 January 2001 (let’s hope they re-release Kubrick’s great movie to mark the occasion). I recognize, however, that some people invest this new year with an uncommon degree of significance. What does the forthcoming century portend for IPA?
Well, for a start, the health of older people should become the predominant public health issue around the world as unprecedented numbers reach old age. Did you know that Indonesia is expecting a 400% increase in its number of old people over the next four decades, the highest rate of growth on the planet? This will happen despite the catastrophic impact of the South East Asian economic meltdown a couple of years ago, which hit Indonesia as hard as anywhere. Sobering food for thought, as you contemplate how you are going to run your service with one less occupational therapist or four closed beds. While those who work with older people in the developed world are running hard to stand still, the developing countries must sprint not to fall further behind, such is the demographic imperative that confronts them. Time and again I must explain to my colleagues who do not work with the elderly that aging is a global challenge to be felt most acutely in the developing world, and not just a special issue for established economies in Europe, North America and Oceania.
Second, the changing environment of the world will bring unprecedented difficulties for us all. The humidity I am noticing in Melbourne or the lack of November snow fall in Chicago, which Dottie Zoller mentioned to me in an e-mail a few weeks ago, are but symptoms of a wider phenomenon, the gross alteration of global environment caused by the burgeoning impact of humanity. Will any people survive the next hundred years? Will rising sea levels drown our major coastal cities? Will the western Antarctic ice sheet become unstable and slide into the sea (see Kim Stanley Robertson, Green Mars, Harper Collins, Glasgow, 1994)? I suspect the answer to these questions is not “if” but “when,” unless we start to take serious measures to tackle the enormous impact of humanity on the biosphere. At least global aging is an encouraging sign. It means the rate of increase of the human population is slowing, which might give us enough breathing space to just squeak through, but I suspect it will be a close run thing. At any rate, the practice of psychogeriatrics can never be divorced from the physical and economic environments in which it takes place. These elements of the matrix in which we operate are hard for us to influence, but ultimately they have a huge influence on what we can offer our patients.
Third, the interconnectedness of everyone and everything offers a unique opportunity for interaction, mutual help, and education. I am always outraged by a sign I see on the way to work, “Buy Australian, save a job for your children.” Why should I do this when the teeming masses in Sri Lanka, Brazil, and China need my expenditure far more acutely than the privileged offspring of my fellow countrymen? We are all human beings, all in the swim together, and the fact that we live in different places is but an accident of history. We need to build bridges of understanding and goodwill, not walls of suspicious incomprehension. Fortunately, improved access to international travel, television, and especially the Internet are breaking down barriers faster than local xenophobes can erect them.
Can IPA do anything about any of this? I think so. Individual members of IPA can extend knowledge and influence attitudes to ensure that the care of the elderly around the world becomes more compassionate, is based on up to date evidence, and utilizes effective interventions. As an organization, IPA can educate, inform, and connect people with a role to play in the care of the elderly with mental illness. Edmond Chiu, organizing a course in Shanghai, Carlos Mangone hosting a meeting in Buenos Aires, and Robin Eastwood editing an excellent journal read around the world (and, one day, on the Internet) are just three examples of IPA members doing things that do make a difference. We have recruited more new members in the past few months than for many years. Welcome to all of you. Don’t be content just to be a member. Be an active member. Contribute papers to IPA’s meetings, read our web site, communicate with a colleague in another country, stand (or at least vote) for election to the Board of Directors, and maybe even send an article, recipe, letter, or news item to the IPA Bulletin sometime soon.
This issue of IPA Bulletin is doing its own bit for bridge building. As well as going to every IPA member, it will be distributed to all registrants at our forthcoming Newcastle upon Tyne meeting, 4-7 April 2000. We expect a high number of registrations from the UK, one of the countries that helped to invent modern psychogeriatrics, and I encourage any non-members reading this editorial to make the leap to member status. We really need your expertise and enthusiasm. British services for older people with psychiatric disorders can stand comparison with the very best in the world, and they got to be that way through the efforts of people like yourselves. That expertise and enthusiasm is needed beyond your own sceptered isle.
Between these pages you will find examples of some of the best things about IPA. In this edition we commence our series “Where are they now?” looking at former IPA Research Scholars and winners of the IPA Research Awards in Psychogeriatrics. As you will see this quarter and beyond, these individuals attribute a significant element of their subsequent success to the opportunities afforded by receipt of an IPA award or scholarship. We have articles on research and practice from developing countries like Rumania and developed ones like the UK. Our news items reflect my vicarious reading of local and international psychogeriatric publications. We are keen to boost this section, so please send in snippets from your own country or international organization. Our “Religions of the World” series is revived by my friend and colleague, Kuruvilla George, from Melbourne. We cover the annual meeting of our sister organization, Alzheimer’s Disease International. We update you on new books and forthcoming meetings, and, best of all, with a recipe from South Africa, we have now published instructions on how to prepare comestibles from all five continents, having had contributions in recent issues from Australia (Neenish tarts), Asia (Jain Indian chocolate cake), Europe (British plum duff) and America (Mexican ceviche). I won’t give too much away about forthcoming issues other than to mention that the next edition will have the sexiest article yet, and this has nothing to do with the fact that Dottie Zoller started her publishing career at a Chicago-based magazine edited by Hugh Hefner!
This editor’s note concluded, I am off for a one-week break at a beach near Lorne, the venue for our joint regional meeting in February 2001. The Second Announcement and registration brochure are enclosed. My colleagues and I look forward to seeing some of you beyond the breaker line early next year, and many others in Newcastle and Buenos Aires over the coming months.
