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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Trends in suicide by drowning in the elderly in England and Wales 1979-2001 | | Author(s) | Emad Salib |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 20, no 2, February 2005 |
| Pages | pp 175-181 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Suicide ; Postmortems ; Longitudinal surveys ; England ; Wales. |
| Annotation | Suicide by drowning increases with age, but rates vary between countries and among communities. This study presents data on the time trends, age/sex mortality rates from death by drowning in older people in England and Wales between 1979 and 2001. All coroners' verdicts for death by drowning, suicide, deaths undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted were examined. This study finds that there has been a gradual reduction in suicide by drowning in men and women by more than one third of the observed count in 1979. However, this decline was less evident in older people, particularly those aged 75+. Drownings of older people appear to attract more verdicts of suicide compared to younger age groups. Women, particularly older women, are more likely to have a suicide verdict returned in drowning compared to men. The high rate of open verdicts in older drownings over the study period and compared to any other method of fatal self-harm in England and Wales confirms the difficulties in reaching a firm conclusion in drowning death. Therefore, combining suicide and all undetermined deaths in drowning as a matter of course in nationally collected statistics may result in grossly exaggerated rates and misleading trends in suicidal drowning. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050221206 A |
| Classmark | EV: JVP: 3J: 82: 9 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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