The works by Tikhon Geyer in the field of geriatric psychiatry

Abstract

The article discusses the biography and scientific achievements of the Russian and Soviet psychiatrist, doctor of medical sciences Tikhon Geyer, who made a significant contribution to the development of geriatric psychiatry, social psychiatry, community-based psychiatric care, medical and occupational forensic assessment, and securing employment for the mentally ill in the Soviet Union. We analyze his early works, which were devoted to studying such forms of mental pathology as Korsakov’s psychosis, Alzheimer's disease, asemic psychoses of old age, involutional melancholy and hysteria. We submit the clinical features of the senile-artherosclerotic dementia with aphatic, apractic, asymptotic disorders, known as the “Gakkebush-Geyer-Geymanovich disease” in the honor of those who first described it. We also submit Geyer’s concept of unified somatopsychic constitution of the presenium.