Crisis intervention with elderly people

This paper gives an overview about the most important aspects of crisis intervention, with special emphasis on crisis intervention with elderly people. First a review of the development of crisis intervention is given, including of some of the major concepts, with particular emphasis on psychoanalytic aspects of crisis intervention. Then a clinical case example of a crisis intervention with an elderly woman following a suicide attempt is given and discussed. The focus lies on the description of the transference-countertransference relationship, with attempts of pressing the therapist to comply with superficial, denying and minimizing fantasies. Peculiarities of crisis intervention with elderly people are highlighted: it is necessary to emphasize that elderly people are underrepresented in most crisis services, whereby they represent the group with the highest suicide risk. Peculiarities of elderly people still are not sufficiently met and they are created by a particularly wide range of aspects.