Objective: To investigate if the suicide phenomenon in the elderly (people aged 65 and over) increased during period 1991-2000 in the Italian provinces of Novara and Verbania, according to the data from the International literature.
Design: The information on suicide was collected from the Archives of the Republic Procuration of Novara and Verbania through the examination of Form 45 (which included all the cases of violent death notified to the Court) in the time span between January 1991 and December 2000.
Materials and Methods: The database was first divided in two groups: 1991-1995 and 1996-2000. The Haentel Haenszel test was applied in order to corroborate the hypothesis that the suicide increased during the analyzed period and to evaluate the suicide trend. The data were analyzed and processed with SPSS 11.0 software for Windows in order to evaluate frequencies and contingency tables. Suicide rates were computed using the mean ISTAT population of the analyzed province.
Results: In the 10-year period considered in the study, there were 162 suicides among the elderly (106 males and 56 females), with an average rate of 17.25 per 100,000 inhabitants (29.78 in males and 9.6 in females). The most common methods used to commit suicide were hanging and jumping from heights, followed by drowning and fire-arms. The factors chiefly related to suicide were the mental disease and the organic illness. The data on the suicide trend are shown in the poster.
Conclusion: The present study provides a description of suicide behavior in the elderly in a geographic and cultural specific context, in order to point out its problematic sides and to provide useful information in a diagnostic and preventive framework. A helpful prevention of the suicide phenomenon could be made through the intervention of the liason psychiatry in order to enhance the communication between the primary care physicians and the psychiatrists through a nursing and therapeutic network.
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