NCT02188485

Social Connections and Late Life Suicide

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 62 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Rochester · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 60 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

With the long-term goal of improving interventions for late-life suicide, the purpose of this study is to examine whether a mechanism by which behavioral interventions reduce risk for late-life suicide is by increasing social connectedness. The investigators propose to examine whether a manualized intervention that targets connectedness--ENGAGE--increases connectedness in older adults who report clinically significant depression and disconnectedness-operationalized as feeling lonely and/or like a burden on others. The investigators propose a randomized controlled trial comparing the ENGAGE intervention with care-as-usual (CAU), using n=100 primary care patients aged ≥ 60 years who report social disconnectedness (i.e., loneliness or burdensomeness) and either Minor or Major Depression. At baseline, 3-week, 6-week and 10-week assessments, subjects will report on social connectedness, depression, and suicide risk. The investigators hypothesize that those subjects assigned to ENGAGE will report greater increases in connectedness-measured as greater belongingness and lower burdensomeness-compared to CAU; that ENGAGE will produce greater reductions in depression and suicide ideation than CAU; and that changes in depression will be accounted for changes in social connectedness.

Conditions

• Depression
• Suicidal Ideation

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	ENGAGE	Up to 10 sessions delivered in the home.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-01-01
• Primary completion: 2017-05-30
• Completion: 2017-05-30
• First posted: 2014-07-11
• Last updated: 2021-10-07
• Results posted: 2021-10-07

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States