Suicide In Old Age Research Articles

Qualities of daily life and suicide in old age: A comparative perspective

The purpose of this article is to examine the incidence of suicide among older people from a crosscultural perspective. A review of the theories and the evidence relied on in studies of the relationship between age and suicide introduces a comparative study of suicide in old age. Age and gender aggregates in eleven countries are examined. Societal conditions, such as educational participation, pension expenditures, marital disruption among the aged, and qualities of daily life, like solitude and work absorption, are associated with late life suicide rates.

Late Suicide in Former Mental Patients

Results from the long-term follow-up studies "The Enquĕte of Lausanne" are presented, concerning the incidence of suicide in old age of former mental patients. Among 1,891 studied deaths, 107 (5.6%) known suicides occurred; the suicide rate for all diagnostic groups, except mental retardation (only females), being considerably higher than in the general Swiss population of the same age, especially for depressions, alcoholism, neurotic and psychopathic personality disorders.

The prevention of suicide in old age

The majority of people who kill themselves are elderly and old. The advances of medical treatment have benefited mainly the younger age groups. As the result, the population has become overaged, and there are more old people than ever to-day. The suicide proneness of the old depends on personality and early life experiences. Even old people who had a broken home in childhood are more suicide prone than others. Most of those who commit suicidal acts are physically or mentally ill. The misconception that illness in old age is always incurable is responsible for many suicides. There are more suicidal attempts than suicides in old age, but the difference between the two is much lower than in the younger age groups. Social isolation is the most important single factor in the causation of suicidal acts among the old. It can be aggravated in a population by emigration of the young. Only a vast improvement of medical and social care for the old can reduce the suicide rate, but so far society has been unwilling to allocate adequate resources to this purpose.

Suicide in Old Age

Suicide in Old Age

Attempted suicide in old age.

Suicide and the mental disorders of old people are two of the foremost social and psychiatric problems of to day. Though the incidence and types of mental disorder occurring in old people have recently attracted much attention, and the rise of the suicide rate with advancing age has long been recognized, few clinical studies of suicide or suicidal attempts in this age group of the population have been reported. This is the more surpris ing since, as the proportion of old people in the com munity rises, the suicide rate may for that reason also rise. It is striking, for example, to find in a recent authoritative study of the mental disorders in later life (Kaplan, 1945) only brief reference to suicide, and no elaboration of its clinical aspects. Gruhle (1941) is often quoted in an opinion which minimizes the importance of psychoses in the genesis of suicidal acts in this age group and emphasizes, as motives, morbid reactions to physical illness and mental incapacity, idleness, boredom, loneliness, and inadapta bility in changed circumstances. Swinscow (1951) in a valuable statistical investigation has come to the conclusion that suicide in the last 50 years has increasingly become a disorder of elderly people, and has suggested that, as the present century has advanced, the old may have found their environment more hostile than the young. Kiorboe (1951) has made a study of 14 old people who committed and 21 who attempted suicide. His con densed findings cannot be abstracted briefly. All his cases were residents in an institution, and his sample is therefore not representative of the community at risk. His conclusions differ materially from those of this paper ?for example, he reported in his group a high incidence of syphilis, and found alcoholism to be an important factor and loneliness rare as a motive for suicide.