TY - JOUR PY - 2015// TI - Suicide in the oldest old: an observational study and cluster analysis JO - International journal of geriatric psychiatry A1 - Sinyor, Mark A1 - Tan, Lynnette Pei Lin A1 - Schaffer, Ayal A1 - Gallagher, Damien A1 - Shulman, Kenneth SP - 33 EP - 40 VL - 31 IS - 1 N2 - OBJECTIVES: The older population are at a high risk for suicide. This study sought to learn more about the characteristics of suicide in the oldest-old and to use a cluster analysis to determine if oldest-old suicide victims assort into clinically meaningful subgroups.

METHODS: Data were collected from a coroner's chart review of suicide victims in Toronto from 1998 to 2011. We compared two age groups (65-79 year olds, n = 335, and 80+ year olds, n = 191) and then conducted a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis using Ward's method to identify distinct clusters in the 80+ group.

RESULTS: The younger and older age groups differed according to marital status, living circumstances and pattern of stressors. The cluster analysis identified three distinct clusters in the 80+ group. Cluster 1 was the largest (n = 124) and included people who were either married or widowed who had significantly more depression and somewhat more medical health stressors. In contrast, cluster 2 (n = 50) comprised people who were almost all single and living alone with significantly less identified depression and slightly fewer medical health stressors. All members of cluster 3 (n = 17) lived in a retirement residence or nursing home, and this group had the highest rates of depression, dementia, other mental illness and past suicide attempts.

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to use the cluster analysis technique to identify meaningful subgroups among suicide victims in the oldest-old. The results reveal different patterns of suicide in the older population that may be relevant for clinical care. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0885-6230 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/gps.4286 ID - ref1 ER -