Almost 90% of older adults have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime,

yet post-traumatic stress disorder continues to be overlooked in older patients.

Clinicians should routinely assess for symptoms of PTSD as a misdiagnosis can lead to

poor health outcomes, including increased risk of suicide.

In this episode, we will shed some light on assessing and treating PTSD in the older patient.

Welcome to the Carlett Psychiatry Podcast. This is another episode from the geriatric psychiatry team.

I am Dr. Rahan Aziz, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Hackensack-Mridian School of Medicine in Nutley, New Jersey.

I'm also the associate program director for geriatric psychiatiatry and Adult Psychiatry at Jersey Shore

University Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey, right on the water.

And I'm ProBjat Gell. I'm the podcast coordinator at Carlop Publishing, and I am entering

graduate school very soon to pursue my doctor in psychology.

We have some exciting news for you.

You can now receive CME credit for listening to this episode and all new episodes going forward

on this feed.

Follow the podcast CME subscription link in the show notes to get access to the CME post desk

for this episode and future ones.

So, Dr. Aziz, can you begin by talking about what the prevalence of PTSD looks like for older adults?

Absolutely. While most patients with trauma histories do not develop PTSD, the prevalence of PTSD in late life is between 1% and 3.5% making it relatively common.

A lot of times when something has a prevalence of 1% it sounds like it's rare, but that's actually

1 out of 100. If you go to a baseball game and there are 50,000 people there, it means almost 500 of

them will have PTSD, which is a significant portion.

How does PTSD present in older adults? In older adults, PTSD can be chronic. Symptoms might first

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