Suicide and Older Adults

From the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH) we learn that:

• Older Americans are disproportionately likely to die by suicide.
  
  
• Although they comprise only 12 percent of the U.S. population, people age 65 and older accounted for 16 percent of suicide deaths in 2004.1
  
  
  
• 14.3 of every 100,000 people age 65 and older died by suicide in 2004, higher than the rate of about 11 per 100,000 in the general population. 1
  
  
  
• Non-Hispanic white men age 85 and older were most likely to die by suicide. They had a rate of 49.8 suicide deaths per 100,000 persons in that age group.1
  

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) [online]. (2005) [accessed January 31 2007]. Available from URL: www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars.

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When they were talking about being 12% of the population, I was thinking that even though over the whole country the difference is significant and a lot of people, it still isn't that much of a difference from an individual perspective.


But when they got down to the part where all people over 65 have a suicide rate of 14.3/100,000 and Non-hispanics men over 85 were killing themselves at a rate of 49.8/100,00 ; they got my attention.


NIMH didn't say much about it, but could this be at least partly due that subtle killer of men's relationships at all ages, the "I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it" factor?




Isolation is always hard, but the older we get the more dangerous it seems to get. Talking about it is not my natural reaction to problems, but the evidence is mounting up here that maybe it has to become a conscious reaction.