Mental Health in Later Life: Better Outcomes through Wise Commissioning

Abstract

Mental health problems in later life are common and damaging experiences for individuals, their families and those who support them. Some become almost the defining feature of the older person and, while they are challenging professionally and costly for society, they are also influenced by the twin discriminations of stigma and ageism. In this, the last in our series on older people's mental health, we pull together some other key messages from the series and set them in the context of current and future service commissioning and provision. We point to remaining gaps in provision and suggest how commissioners might approach the problems of mental ill‐health in later life in a context of declining resources.