The likelihood of and elderly person committing suicide is significantly higher if he or she has been hospitalized for a medical illness in the previous 2 years, according to Danish researchers.

However, the suicide risk in this population is still lower than that in middle-age people.

Dr. Annette Erlangsen, and colleagues from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, evaluated the effect of hospitalization for medical illness on the risk of suicide in 1,684,205 people at least 52 years of age living in Denmark during 1996 to 1998. The subjects were divided into three groups: older than 80 years of age (oldest old), 65 to 79 years (old), and 52 to 64 years (middle-age).

A total of 1184 subjects committed suicide during the 3-year study period, including 779 men and 405 women, the investigators report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The oldest-old men who had been hospitalized during the previous 2 years had an increased risk of suicide, at 113 per 100,000 versus 80 per 100,000 in the general population of men of the same age.

The oldest-old women who had been hospitalized also had higher suicide rates than their peer group.

“Comparing the relative risk within each age group showed that hospitalization was associated with a lower increase in risk in the oldest old than in the middle-aged,” Dr. Erlangsen’s team writes.

The risk for the oldest-old men doubled and the risk for the middle-age men tripled, they note. “The risk for the oldest-old and the middle-aged women who had been hospitalized recently quadrupled and quintupled, respectively.”

“Considering that hospitalization with medical illness often precedes suicide in the oldest old, hospitalization may play an important role in identification of suicidal ideation in older people,” the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, May 2005.