Abstract
Social work professionals serve an important role in identifying and assisting individuals at risk of suicide and connecting them to the resources they need to improve quality of life. The purpose of this poster is to examine suicidal prevalence, the biological and psychological risk factors, and the protective factors and coping strategies that social workers should consider to help reduce occurrences of suicide in the elderly. According to Garand, Mitchell, Dietrick, Hijjawi, and Pan (2006), suicide is the thirteenth leading cause of death amongst individuals age 65 and older and aging adults are at higher risk than other life stages to complete suicide. Statistics show that in the United States, aging Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the population yet they account for 18% of all completed suicides (2006). Older adults are the fastest growing population due to the baby boom cohort and according to the National Institute of Mental Health (2013) older adults have disproportionately died due to suicide compared to the general population which makes incidences of late-life suicide higher than the national average (2013).
