Archival Description of Clinical Geropsychology

Clinical Geropsychology is a proficiency in professional psychology concerned with helping older persons and their families maintain well-being, overcome problems, and achieve maximum potential during later life. To be recognized as proficient in clinical geropsychology, a psychologist must have particular knowledge, skill, training and experience related to the aging process, and in dealing with older persons and the special issues that affect them.

Clinical Geropsychology differs from other proficiencies primarily along the population parameter, given its focus on the elderly population. Psychologists with this proficiency provide assessment, consultation and intervention services related to psychological adaptations in later life (e.g., adapting to age-related changes, bereavement), psychopathology (e.g., affective disorders, dementias), behavioral problems (e.g., wandering, aggressive behavior, behavioral aspects of incontinence); problems in daily living (e.g., marital and family problems, coping with acute and chronic stressors); medical and legal decision-making capacity (e.g., legal guardianship); independent living arrangements; behavioral competencies (e.g., driving, management of medications, self-care skills, financial management); and sociocultural and socioeconomic factors influencing the experience and expression of psychological problems. Distinctive interventions include reminiscence and life review therapies, grief therapy, expressive therapies and psychoeducational programs for family caregivers.

Psychologists with this proficiency work in a variety of settings reflecting the continuum of care along which most geriatric services are delivered, including outpatient settings; day-care programs; inpatient medical or psychiatric hospital units, nursing home/extended care facilities; assisted living communities and home care, among others. Competency in Clinical Geropsychology requires distinctive knowledge in the areas of research and theory in aging; cognitive psychology (including both normal and abnormal changes in adult cognition); social/psychological aspects of aging (e.g., demographics of aging, family and intergenerational issues, cross-cultural and minority aspects, personality, retirement, use of leisure); biological aspects of aging (including chronic illness, terminal disease, falls in the aged, nutrition, exercise, sensory changes, pharmacology (e.g., pharmacodynamic changes tied to aging and problems stemming from multiple medications).

Education and training in Clinical Geropsychology is available at the doctoral, postdoctoral, and continuing education levels. Knowledge bases for training have been articulated in the 1981 Conference on Training Psychologists for Work in Aging (Older Boulder) Conference as summarized in Psychology and the Older Adult: Challenges for Training in the 1980s (Santos & VandenBos, 1982). The APA Interdivisional Task Force on Qualifications for Practice in Clinical and Applied Geropsychology has formulated a series of principles regarding the training and experience that psychologists should have in order to engage responsibly in clinical practice with older adults.