Although elderly patients have been treated at the Psychiatric Hospital Rab pracitically since the very beginning of its work, due to the specific nature of the patients' needs and the highly specialized staff, a ward for Old Age Mental Disorders was set up in 2002 with a capacity of 43 beds. The patients are over 65 and they are placed in separate rooms. There are two intensive care rooms on the ward. A team of nurses (nine female and one male nurse), physiotherapisst and nursing assistants works on this ward.

Apart from the age factor, other criteria for a patient's admission to this ward are organic psychological disorders including dementia, amnestic and other cognitive disorders, alcoholics' dementia and all psychological disorders where the patient refuses to communicate with a specific primary health care in a home for the elderly and bedridden persons and where the patient's condition is of a kind that cannot be dealt with in that type of institutions. The treatment programme is based on an early differential diagnostics and the diagnosis of dementia in both sexes, as well as the hospitalization and treatment of patients who have become mentally ill in the senium or younger persons who suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Parallel with the patient's treatment, a systematic education of their family members is done. They are informed about the causes and the consequences of the illness as well as with the importance of noticing the symptoms early in order to prevent future hospitalizations.

Pharmacotherapeutic treatment is done with the new generation of psychiatric drugs defined by the specificity of neurotransmitter relations that are a result of pathoanatomic changes of the CNS. After subduing acute symptomatology (agitation, aggression, delirium states) the patient is monitored and other cognitive and social skills are assessed after which the patient is integrated in polyvalent therapy programmes (music, art and other therapies) in order to preserve and increase the quality of the patient's life, achieve optimal activities of daily living as well as prepare the patient for life in the community.  A criterion for a patient's discharge is cessation of acute psychotic decompensations and an improvement of psychological condition to the point where they are able to continue functioning in their social milieu (family, homes etc.).