Centre for Policy on Ageing



Suicidal thinking in community residents over eighty
Author(s)	Rahul Rao, Tom Dening, Carol Brayne
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 12, no 3,, March 1997
Pages	pp 337-343
Keywords	Suicide ; Dementia ; Depression ; Octogenarians ; Older women ; Living in the community ; Evaluation ; Cambridge.
Annotation	Participants aged 81 and over in Cambridge had been examined for incidence of dementia and cognitive decline in the previous 7 years. CAMDEX (the Cambridge Examination for Mental Disorders of the Elderly), the 15-item General Depression Scale (GDS), and Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI) found 9 people showing suicidal thinking, all women; 6 had evidence of cardiovascular/cerebrovascular disease. Those with suicidal thinking showed higher CAMDEX depression scores, weaker strength of the wish to go on living, higher rates of expressing wish to die and depressive illness and mixed DAT/multi-infarct dementia as primary psychiatric diagnoses. Results did not support associations between suicidal thinking and GDS scores, Alzheimer-type dementia alone, awareness of memory difficulties or severity of dementia. Results should be treated with caution, given the methodological limitations. Further exploration of the role of cerebrovascular disease in depressive disorder is suggested.
Accession Number	CPA-970807226 A
Classmark	EV: EA: ENR: BBM: BD: K4: 4C: 8CF
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.