In Session: Practicing Clinical Skills to Prevent Suicide in Older Adults

Course overview

If you ask the average American which age group has the highest rate of suicide, many people will state that adolescents are at greatest risk. Perhaps you have encountered the statistic that reports suicide as the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults (Hedegaard et al., 2020). It can be easy for people, even experienced clinicians, to misunderstand that statistic, rather than evaluating it within an appropriate context of mortality risk factors. Suicide among young people is a serious problem. However, this cohort is not among those with the highest risk for suicide. The number of suicides annually in adults over 65 exceeds all others (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020). Despite this fact, suicide is not among the top 10 leading causes of death for this age group. This reflects the increased rates of other causes of death that are more likely to impact people as they age, such as heart disease and cancer. However, according to data from the CDC, from 1999 through 2018, men over the age of 75 had the highest rate of suicide in the U.S. (Hedegaard et al., 2020). Lack of awareness of the elevated risk of suicide among older adults can lead to a failure to appropriately assess for potential suicide risk and to effectively intervene to reduce that risk. This course will provide you with an opportunity to apply your existing knowledge of suicide prevention to assess and intervene with an at-risk older adult, Jimmy. By interacting with him in a simulated therapy session, you will see how your selection of responses impacts his level of risk and his outcome. Supervisory input will also help guide you through this simulation exercise. If you have not participated in in-depth training on suicide risk assessment and interventions, we recommend that you review our other suicide prevention courses first. After learning about evidence-based approaches for reducing suicide risk, you can then use this simulation to reinforce your knowledge. The goal of this course is to provide alcohol and drug counseling, behavioral health counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and social work professionals in health and human services settings with an opportunity to apply their existing knowledge to assess and intervene with an at-risk older adult.