Medical comorbidity and mental disorders in older adults

Comorbidity is a common characteristic of mental illness in all age groups. In younger persons, however, the comorbidity is often a manifestation of substance abuse or personality disorder complicating another major mental illness. In older adults comorbidity is most often characterized by concurrent mental and physical illness with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases playing the most prominent role in both the etiology and prognosis. Excessive or persistent disability is the common ground upon which medical comorbidity and mental disorders manifest their relationship. (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.