Real-life Experience of the Elderly Vulnerable to Suicide

Abstract

This study attempted to understand the real-life experience of the elderly who are vulnerable to suicide. Interviews were conducted with 10 elderly at risk of suicide and the data were analyzed by grounded theory method. Their life experiences were classified into 56 concepts, 16 subcategories and 6 categories and a paradigm model was proposed by axial coding. The paradigm model illustrated that “cumulative hardship” (causal condition) and “inescapable hopelessness” (contextual condition) are connected to “starving to death” (central phenomenon), along with “life strings” (intervening condition), “holding out” (action/interaction strategy), and “hope for a good death” (internal consequence). These results allowed us to understand the elderly suicide phenomenon through the cumulative disadvantage theory of aging and the theory of hopelessness depression. Moreover, we found that it is necessary to create a social network in the community and provide the programs which stimulate the meaning of life and develop an optimistic view on life for the elderly vulnerable to suicide.