Special Considerations in the Psychiatric Evaluation Across the Lifespan: Children, Adolescents, and the Elderly

Psychiatric evaluation needs to be tailored to each individual, a process that is made more predictable by the largely age-associated changes in human functioning across developmental epochs. The substantial changes in cognitive, language, and personality development, in addition to the roles and structures that are often associated with these periods, mean that the focus of such assessments as well as the assessment techniques will vary. The assessment of children may depend more heavily on significant caregivers, a role that steadily diminishes over the adult years but may increase in the later years of life. Various psychiatric conditions onset in different developmental periods meaning that the assessment targets will also be different. Despite these modifications, the assessments across the lifespan include an understanding of the individual, screening for mental health symptoms, detailed assessment of psychopathology, and contextual information that helps understand such symptoms, their impact and prognosis.