Although suicide rates in older people of both sexes have dropped considerably since the 1980s, they are still high, with older men showing a higher rate than women.

Suicide in older people is strongly associated with depression, physical pain or illness, living alone and feelings of hopelessness and guilt.

Community surveys suggest that as many as 16 per cent of older people may be experiencing depression, but that only a fraction of these may be known to GP and psychiatric services.

Most suicides in older people occur in the community, and most have had no contact with old age psychiatry services.

Cattell and Jolley's research found that community old age psychiatry services were seeing less than 25 per cent of older people with depression who later went on to kill themselves, and most of these people had not seen their family doctor within the month prior to suicide. [16]

The most common means of suicide in older people are overdose of prescribed and over-the-counter drugs and hanging, the latter being far more frequent in older men.

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