Researchers studied 2528 older adults who committed suicide by using a nationwide database for this matched case-control study (Yeh et al., 2020). Physical and psychiatric illnesses were identified by tracing back one year from the date of death from the previous year on July 1 to the observational year on June 30 in the controls. The results showed that older adults with depression, cancer and schizophrenia were more at risk of dying by suicide than the control group. Illnesses such as bipolar disorder, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, chronic kidney disease and hypertension showed lower risk but still significantly higher in older adults with suicide. The conclusions of this study can help clinicians identify older adults at risk of suicide and open up pathways for prevention.
Read the article
Open access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503271930432X
Comentários