9%, the article reports, compared with a 3% decline in the control group. At eight months, the intervention group reflected a 70.7 decline in suicide ideation, compared with just 43.9% in the control group. This clearly shows that when the health care industry takes a special interest and provides helpful intervention techniques, elderly people begin to feel more like living than dying.
The Journal of Counseling and Development reports that many older people who seek treatment for depression do not get that treatment, and "most treatment fails to meet reasonable evidence-based standards of care" (Zalaquett, et al., 2006). It is generally accepted among medical researchers that psychosocial interventions for treating depression in older adults falls short of meeting..." their needs; but beyond that, people living in poverty "...were nearly 4 times as likely to experience chronic depression as affluent people" and yet those low income people without additional coverage to supplement Medicare "were less likely to receive psychotherapy."
CONCLUSION: It is clear that many older people, for a variety of health and situational reasons, give serious consideration to suicide. It is also clear that when there is psychosocial intervention, those older people begin to become more positive about their lives. And beyond that, the data found while researching this paper indicates that more seniors prefer counseling...
The answer for community-based health care service providers is to increase the number of counselors available to the elderly, decrease the number of prescriptions for antidepressant drugs, and give special attention to the low income sector of older people because they are the most often in need and most often neglected.
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Curran, Joseph. (2006). Deliberate self-harm in the over 60s. Mental Health Practice, 10(1),
Fitzpatrick, Joyce. (2005). Signs of silent suicide among depressed hospitalized geriatric
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Juurlink, D.N.; Herrmann, N.; & Szalai, J.P. (2004). Physical illness may drive elderly people to suicide. Clinician Reviews, 14(8), 32-34.
Waern, Margda; Rubenowitz, E.; Runeson, B.; Skoog, I.; Wilhelmson, K.; & Allebeck
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Zalaquett, Carlos P., & Sterns, Andrea N. (2006). Psychosocial treatments for…
