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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| A preliminary cross-national study of a possible relationship between elderly suicide rates and tuberculosis | | Author(s) | Ajit Shah |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 21, no 6, December 2009 |
| Pages | pp 1190-1201 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Suicide ; Tuberculosis ; Correlation ; Cross national surveys. |
| Annotation | The older population are at high risk of developing tuberculosis. The prevalence and incidence of depression and anxiety are higher in those with tuberculosis than in the general population. A positive correlation between national suicide rates and rates of mortality due to tuberculosis has been reported. The relationships between suicide rates for older people and the prevalence of tuberculosis, the proportion of detected cases of tuberculosis, and the proportion of cured cases of tuberculosis were examined in a cross-national study using data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN). There were no significant correlations between elderly suicide rates and the prevalence of tuberculosis and the proportion of detected cases of tuberculosis. There were weak but significant negative correlations between the proportion of cured cases of tuberculosis and suicide rates for both sexes in both elderly age-bands. Caution should be exercised in interpreting the findings and the direction of the causal relationship from this cross-sectional ecological study because of ecological fallacy. However, if the findings are true, then potentially the study has important implications for prevention of suicides in older people, particularly in countries with a high prevalence of tuberculosis. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100226207 A |
| Classmark | EV: CJT: 49: 3K |
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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