IPA Press Releases

Suicide among the world’s elderly is becoming epidemic - a rapidly escalating global tragedy

VANCOUVER,B.C. (August 19) - Dr. Eric Caine, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York, said here this week that compassion motivates concern worldwide about suicide among teens and young adults, but far too little attention is being paid to the much graver statistical data of suicide among the elderly.

Dr. Caine is leading efforts by the International Psychogeriatric Association, in cooperation with the World Health Organization, to initiate a global program to address this problem. A director of IPA, Dr. Caine is among 2,000 of the world's foremost authorities on mental health and aging, who have been meeting here since Sunday.

"Suicide among the elderly is becoming epidemic," Dr. Caine said. He cited three principal reasons for this:

• This is the fastest growing segment of the population in developed countries, a "demographic imperative" that fuels the concern. People are living longer worldwide, with dramatic increases to life expectancy in developing countries, and in the rest of the world, the postwar baby boom is moving toward advanced age.
• Suicide rates are highest among the elderly and the situation appears to be getting worse. Depression is a primary factor in these deaths.
• Much of the depression occurs because of multiple small problems - medical and otherwise - exaggerated in the minds of an individual, more often than because of terminal illness. People become "demoralized and discouraged" by their declining physical abilities and assorted nagging problems, but the depression these difficulties generate is far more serious than whatever brought it on. Dr. Caine said the ultimate tragedy is that most of these people suffer from "eminently treatable late-onset depression." He said 75 per cent of elder suicides involve depression and fully two-thirds of those would have been late-onset and "very treatable."

Researchers have more questions than answers. Older men commit suicide four to six times the rate worldwide as do women, but there are anomalies. In Hong Kong, the rate is just 1.3 men versus women.

"We don't understand these extraordinary variations in different societies," Dr. Caine said. "What are the risk factors and what are the protective factors? What protective interventions will lead to prevention?"

This is the challenge IPA wishes to research and address around the world.

The Congress will conclude Friday.