2010 GSA Symposium

I participated in my first conference symposium this afternoon! The topic was late life suicide. Four students from West Virginia University and I presented research in this area. Marnin Heisel, PhD, an assistant professor at The University of Western Ontario, was the discussant and did an excellent job of integrating our research findings and linking them to previous late life suicide research.

I presented the paper that was recently published in Aging and Mental Health. The major finding of the study was that problem- and emotion-foucsed coping strategies appear to be related to protective factors against suicide. Implications for clinical practice are that coping strategies should be included in a thorough assessment of at-risk older adults. A potential point of intervention with suicidal older adults may be to encourage the use of adaptive coping strategies to deal with current stressors.