The paper investigated relationship between hypertension, diabetes mellitus and psychopathology at the geriatric age. The patients with a chronic somatic disease suffer from psychic disorders at a higher frequency in comparison with a common population, since the occurrence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus of 2nd type is signifi cantly higher in patients treated at the wards of geriatric psychiatry, as compared with a common population. The authors examined 380 patients of geriatric psychiatry in Kroměříž, dividing them into four groups: 1) patients with hypertension, 2) patients with hypertension complicated with a brain vascular stroke, 3) patients treated for diabetes mellitus, 4) patients treated for diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Both sexes were equally represented in each group, difference in the mean age were not signifi cant. The diagnosis of dementia was most frequent in the group of patients with hypertension complicated with the occurrence of stroke, the least frequency was observed in the group of uncomplicated hypertension. Delirious conditions accompanied dementia in 72.2%, but in the group of uncomplicated hypertension, delirious conditions occurred signifi cantly more often if dementia was not present. The prevalence of anxious and affective disorders, disorders with delusions, organic personality disorders and hallucinatory disorders did not differ signifi cantly among the individual examined groups.

        Key words: dementia, depression, delirium, organic psychiatric disorders, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, comorbidity.