When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, in 2021 issued a stark warning about a mental health crisis among U.S. teens and young adults, public health organizations rallied to the cause. Within a couple of years, government agencies were able to report a significant decline in the suicide rates of young people. It may be time for a similar effort targeting an even more suicide-prone demographic: seniors.
Men over the age of 75 are more likely than any other age group to die by suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 94 out of every 100,000 deaths in this age group are self-inflicted. And the rates of suicide among Americans 55 and older have risen significantly over the past two decades. The rate for men between the ages of 55 and 64 rose by 25 percent to 26.6 per 100,000 deaths; suicides by women 65 to 74 years old increased by 44 percent — though they remain relatively rare at 5.6 per 100,000 deaths.
Social behavior experts explain this gender variance in several ways. For example, although aging delivers disease and disability to both men and women, men tend to adapt to it less gracefully, Yeates Conwell, MD, a psychiatry professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, tells STAT News: “Because the male identity is so wrapped up in the ability to care for oneself, that transition to being a care receiver and needing more help from other people can be difficult.”
Women also tend to cultivate social connections more readily than men, and those relationships can help ease the loneliness that often triggers suicidal thoughts, explains Igor Galynker, MD, director of Mount Sinai’s Suicide Research and Prevention Laboratory. “Men spend their life achieving and neglect social connections,” he says. “Women retire a lot better; it’s less traumatic for them. Men are so invested in their work [that] they lose both social connections from work and the meaning of life.”
And when loneliness and depression set in, guys tend to act on suicidal thoughts more quickly — and effectively — than women. Though the number of suicide attempts differ little between older men and women, men are far more likely to use a gun, which typically guarantees a fatal result. “It doesn’t offer many opportunities to change one’s mind,” says Rosie Bauder, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Unlike the ongoing campaign to reduce teen suicides, however, there’s been little interest in developing public health strategies to address the same issue among older Americans. Gun-control measures, such as extreme risk protection order laws, which allow police to confiscate firearms from people at high risk of suicide, could save some lives. And some experts advocate for therapeutic interventions to help men adapt more easily to the mental rigors of aging. But, as researchers at Mass General Brigham Hospital note in a recent study published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, there’s been little progress on making these and other options more visible.
“As clinicians and researchers in geriatric psychiatry, we frequently work with older adults who express suicidal thoughts,” notes lead study author Ipsit Vahia, MD. “Our team was interested in understanding how an older adult in the community may seek resources around suicide prevention and what they are likely to find. What we uncovered was an imbalance in who online suicide prevention efforts are targeted towards and a great unmet need for older adults.”
Vahia and his team conducted online searches to identify the most visible organizations focused on suicide prevention. Among the seven groups they reviewed, five seemed to recognize older adults as a high-risk population, but none of them posted any information on public health campaigns focused on seniors. And only two of the organizations provided any resources for this cohort.
“Public-facing suicide-prevention campaigns have a record of effectiveness, and the need for such campaigns targeting older adults is greater than ever,” Vahia says. “Our hope is that shedding a light on this imbalance may lead to major suicide-prevention organizations considering ways to make their resources more easily accessible to older adults.”
In his warning about teen mental health in 2021, Vivek Murthy was referring to the COVID pandemic when he wrote, “It would be a tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis only to allow another to grow in its place.” The rise of elderly suicides suggests a tragedy he may not have imagined has emerged, fully grown.
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