Men and women over the age of 85 found most at risk

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There's concern over the rate of suicide among older Australians. The age most at risk is men and women over the age of 85, with the rates of suicide among older women on the rise, post Covid.

Transcript

00:00 Suicide in our oldest old is one of the undiscussed issues in Australia.

00:06 Whilst we've had success in reducing suicide rates for many parts of the population, if

00:13 you look over the decades, we have really not succeeded in reducing the rates for our

00:19 oldest old, which contrasts the United Kingdom, who have managed to reduce their rates.

00:24 So I think that's important.

00:26 There's opportunity here to do something.

00:28 We're going to find the what that something is.

00:31 And COVID, I think, has brought into context many of the factors we think about, that why

00:38 the older old may be vulnerable.

00:40 But we need to also not forget, they're actually incredibly resilient.

00:44 The elderly hope we do things that when we look forward and put ourselves in their position,

00:49 we think we couldn't cope with.

00:51 And the vast majority do.

00:53 And that's what we need to build on.

00:55 So are we now just starting to see the impact of COVID on older people's mental health,

01:00 Rod?

01:01 How great was the worry about that age group going into the pandemic?

01:05 The worry was very high going into the pandemic.

01:08 There was a number of articles written about the risk for older people, because we know

01:15 in the SARS pandemic in Hong Kong, older people did fare badly.

01:20 The good news is older people in Australia actually have fared much better than was expected.

01:26 We haven't seen a marked increase, although we have seen an increase in rate amongst our

01:32 oldest women, which is of concern.

01:34 But our oldest men remain the people who are at the highest risk of suicide.

01:41 Rod, is there a different response to the idea of suicide among people in later life

01:47 than for younger people?

01:50 Unfortunately, we know there is, particularly amongst people who are responding.

01:55 We know that in younger people, when people talk about suicide, there was a response of

01:59 what can we do?

02:01 There is too often a response when an older person talks about not wanting to live of

02:07 I can understand that rather than what can I do.

02:11 And that can reinforce the lack of hope by the person, rather than actually look at what

02:16 can be done.

02:18 And the good news is that we know that there is lots that can be done for the older person

02:23 who's considering suicide.

02:25 Such as?

02:27 The first thing is to actually open the discussion, to not respond as I can understand that, but

02:32 actually to ask the question of what can I do?

02:37 And then to try to connect the person to those people who can help.

02:41 So we know that loneliness, social isolation, chronic pain, a sense of lack of worth or

02:48 a sense that I'm no longer important to people are all important.

02:53 And they're all things that we can do active things for.

02:56 And that's the key thing is to give that sense of hope that we can achieve something and

03:01 then help the person to regain that hope that something can be achieved and life can be

03:06 worthwhile.

03:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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