Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:08:09.933Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are elderly suicide rates improved by increased provision of mental health service resources? A cross-national study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2008

Ajit Shah  and
Ravi Bhat
Ajit Shah*
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston, U.K. and West London Mental Health NHS Trust, London, U.K.
Ravi Bhat
Affiliation:
Centre for Older Persons' Health and School of Rural Health, University of Melbourne, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Professor Ajit Shah, West London Mental Health NHS Trust, Uxbridge Road, Southall, Middlesex, UB1 3EU, U.K. Phone: +44 208 354 8140; Fax: +44 208 354 8898. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background: Elderly suicide rates may be influenced by mental health service provision.

Methods: A cross-national study examining the hypothesis that the relationship between elderly suicide rates and markers of mental health service provision would be curvilinear (inverted-U shaped curve) and fit the quadratic equation y = a + bx − cx2 (where y is the elderly suicide rate, x is a marker for mental health service provision, and a, b and c are constants) was undertaken by utilizing data from the World Health Organization.

Results: The relationship between the logarithm of suicide rates in both sexes in both the elderly age-bands and the percentage of the total health budget spent on mental health, the total number of psychiatric beds per 10,000 population and the total number of psychiatrists per 10,000 population were curvilinear (inverted U-shaped curve) and fitted the quadratic equation y = a + bx − cx2 with statistical significance.

Conclusions: The direction of the causal relationship could be examined in longitudinal studies, after further improvement in levels of mental health service provision, in individual countries segregated by low and high levels of existing mental health service provision.

Keywords

elderly suicidesservice provisionmental health policy and funding
Type
Research Article
Information
International Psychogeriatrics , Volume 20 , Issue 6 , December 2008 , pp. 1230 - 1237
Copyright
Copyright © International Psychogeriatric Association 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, V. J., Abraham, S. and Jacob, K. S. (2005). Suicide in the elderly in Kanyambadi block, Tamil Nadu, South India. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 20, 953–955.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cattell, H. (1988). Elderly suicides in London: an analysis of coroners' inquests. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 3, 251–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cattell, H. and Jolley, D. (1995). One hundred cases of suicide in the elderly. British Journal of Psychiatry, 166, 451–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiu, H. F. K., Takahashi, Y. and Suh, G. K. (2003). Elderly suicide prevention in East Asia. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 18, 973–976.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conwell, Y., Rotenberg, M. and Caine, E. D. (1990). Completed suicides at age 50 and over. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 38, 640–644.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conwell, Y., Olsen, K., Caine, E. D. and Flannery, C. (1991). Suicide in later life: psychological autopsy findings. International Psychogeriatrics, 3, 59–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diekstra, R. F. W. (1989). Suicide and attemptede suicide: an international perspective. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 80 (Suppl. 354), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunnell, D., Middleston, N., Whitley, E., Dorling, D. and Frankel, S. (2003). Why are suicide rates rising in young men but falling in the elderly? A time-series analysis of trends in England and Wales 1950–1998. Social Science and Medicine, 57, 595–611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoxey, K. and Shah, A. K. (2000). Recent trends in suicide rates and methods in England and Wales. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 15, 274–279.3.0.CO;2-I>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jianlin, J. (2000). Suicide rates and mental health services in modern China. Crisis, 21, 118–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kua, E. H., Ko, S. M. and Ng, T. P. (2003). Recent trends in elderly suicide rates in a multi-ethnic Asian city. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 18, 533–536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodhi, L. and Shah, A. K. (2005). Factors associated with the recent decline in suicide rates in England and Wales. 1985–1998. Medicine, Science and the Law, 45, 115–120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moscicki, E. K. (1995). North American perspectives: epidemiology of suicide. International Psychogeriatrics, 7, 137–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rehkopf, D. H. and Buka, S. L. (2006). The association between suicide and the socio-economic characteristics of geographical areas: a systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 36, 145–157.Google Scholar
Shah, A. K. (2007a). The relationship between suicde rates and age: an analysis of multinational data from the World Health Organization. International Psychogeriatrics, 19, 1141–1152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, A. K. (2007b). Trends in elderly suicide rates in the United Kingdom over 24 years from 1979 to 2002. Medicine, Science and Law, 47, 56–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shah, A. K. and Bhat, R. (2008). The relationship between elderly suicide rates and mental health funding, service provision and national policy: a cross-national study. International Psychogeriatrics, 20, 594–607. DOI: 10.1017/S1041610207006552.Google ScholarPubMed
Shah, A. K. and De, T. (1998). Suicide and the elderly. International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 2, 3–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shah, A. K. and Ganesvaran, T. (1994). Suicide in the elderly. In Chiu, E. and Ames, D. (eds.), Functional Psychiatric Disorders of the Elderly (pp. 221–244). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, A. K. and MacKenzie, S. (2007) Disorders of ageing across cultures. In Bhugra, D. and Bhui, K. (eds.), Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry (pp. 323–344). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, A. K., Ellanchanny, N. and Collinge, T. (2001). Trends in age-band specific suicide rates in the elderly. Medicne, Science and the Law, 41, 102–106.Google Scholar
Shah, A. K., Bhat, R., MacKenzie, S. and Koen, C. (2008). A cross-national study of the relationship between elderly suicide rates and life expectancy and markers of socio-economic status and healthcare. International Psychogeriatrics, 20, 347–360. DOI: 10.1017/S1041610207005352.Google Scholar
Vassilas, C. A. and Morgan, H. G. (1993). General practitioner's contact with victims of suicide. BMJ, 307, 300–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vassilas, C. A. and Morgan, H. G. (1994). Elderly suicides' contact with their general practitioner before death. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 9, 1008–1009.Google Scholar
Wasserman, D., Cheng, Q. and Jiang, G. X. (2005). Global suicide rates among young people aged 15–19. World Psychiatry, 114–120.Google Scholar
Yip, P. S. F. (2001). An epidemiological profile of suicides in Beijing, Chine. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behaviour, 31, 62–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, P. S. F. and Tan, R. C. E. (1998). Suicides in Hong Kong and Singapore: a tale of two cities. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 44, 267–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, P. S. F., Callanan, C. and Yuen, H.P. (2000). Urban/rural and gender differences in suicide rates: East and West. Journal of Affective Disorders, 57, 99–106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yip, P. S. F., Liu, K. Y., Hu, J. and Song, X. M. (2005). Suicide rates in China during a decade of rapid social change. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 40, 792–798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar