| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Is there a relationship between elderly suicide rates and smoking?
— a cross national study | | Author(s) | Ajit Shah |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 23, no 3, March 2008 |
| Pages | pp 308-313 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Tobacco smoking ; Suicide ; Death rate [statistics] ; Cross national surveys. |
| Annotation | An independent relationship between smoking cigarettes and completed suicides has been reported in several cohort and case-control studies of younger subjects, but this relationship has rarely been examined in older populations. The relationship between the prevalence of smoking in males and females and suicide rates in males and females in the age bands 65-74 and 75+ were examined using national-level aggregate data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) websites. In addition to univariate analysis, multivariate analysis was conducted to ascertain an independent relationship between the prevalence of smoking and suicide rates in older people. Findings for univariate analysis were that the prevalence of smoking in males was positively correlated with suicide rates for both age bands, but this relationship was absent in females. On multivariate analysis, there was no independent relationship between prevalence of smoking in males and females and suicide rates in males in both age bands. There is a case for the examination of the relationship between smoking and older suicides in individual-level cohort or case control studies because of the potential methodological difficulties in cross-national studies using national-level aggregate data, paucity of cohort or case-control studies at an individual level in older people, and the observation of an independent relationship between smoking and completed suicides in individual level and cohort case-control studies in younger age groups. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080430205 A |
| Classmark | ETT: EV: S5: 3K |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|