Individual Psychotherapy (IN: Preventing Elderly Suicide: Overcoming Personal Despair, Professional Neglect, and Social Bias by J Richman)

This chapter notes that individual treatment is rarely sufficient in & of itself. In the past, older suicidal persons were considered unsuitable for individual psychotherapy. Ageism is considered part of the problem. Two forms of treatment developed specifically for the suicidal – the narcissistic vulnerability model & the ego vulnerability model – are discussed. Both are psychoanalytically oriented. For the elderly, integration of individual treatment with family therapy is recommended.