Australia is a multiethnic society with 25% of its elderly population born outside the country. Rates and methods, gender, and country of birth are given for all suicides aged 65 and over in Australia during the 12-year period of 1979–1990. There was a marked heterogeneity in rates and methods of suicide among the various migrant groups. The data also showed that the suicide rates of migrants were mostly higher than in their country of origin. Migrants born in countries with high suicide rates generally had high rates in Australia, and vice versa. Possible reasons for this finding are discussed. Factors influencing rates and methods of suicide in elderly migrants appeared to have much in common with factors operating in migrants of all age groups.

Beyond its empirical importance documented through epidemiological data, suicide is of symbolic importance due to its close relationship with the values of life and death, privacy and openness, responsibility and reliance, and suffering and resistance. It appears, in daily life circumstances, to reveal or remind us of the limits of our perception of others' intimate world and of our fundamental solitude in the face of life and death. The issues associated with suicide, particularly with elderly suicide, must be confronted. Researchers, clinicians, and planners, among others, must take care not to close the chapter prematurely on suicide by pretending to have discovered “the” final cause of suicide, in a kind of scientific exorcism.

Suicide is an action that calls for explanation. Many who kill themselves leave written words behind, attempting to explain, but many others do not. For those outside the experience, there remains a need to understand. Self-inflicted death may make sense occasionally, however painful it may be to those left behind. Most often, it is called a tragedy, death before one's time.