Recent developments: Suicide in older people

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7471.895

BMJ 2004;329:895-899 (16 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7471.895

Clinical review

Recent developments: Suicide in older people

Henry O'Connell, research fellow¹, Ai-Vyrn Chin, research fellow¹, Conal Cunningham, consultant¹, Brian A Lawlor, Conolly Norman professor of old age psychiatry¹

¹ Mercer's Institute for Research on Ageing, Hospital 4, St James's Hospital, Dublin 8, Republic of Ireland

Correspondence to: H O'Connell henryoconnell@hotmail.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Elderly people have a higher risk of completed suicide thanany other age group worldwide.¹ Despite this, suicide in elderlypeople receives relatively little attention, with public healthmeasures, medical research, and media attention focusing onyounger age groups.² We outline the epidemiology and causalfactors associated with suicidal behaviour in elderly peopleand summarise the current measures for prevention and managementof this neglected phenomenon.

Sources and selection criteria

We searched Medline and the Cochrane database for original researchand review articles on suicide in elderly people using the searchterms "suicide", "elderly", and "older".

Dispelling the myths (Greek and otherwise)

From time immemorial, suicidal feelings and hopelessness havebeen considered part of ageing and understandable in the contextof being elderly and having physical disabilities. The AncientGreeks tolerated these attitudes in the extreme and gave elderlypeople the option of assisted suicide if they could plead convincinglythat they had no useful role in society. Such practices . . . [Full text of this article]

Epidemiology of suicidal behaviours

Factors associated with suicide in elderly people: re-examining the files of usual suspects

Psychological factors
Physical factors
Social factors

Detection

Management

Conclusions

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