Little is being done to prevent suicide in older Americans

For those 65 and older, the U.S. suicide rate is 14 per 100,000.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Not long after 72-year-old Anne Beale Golson had retired on disability from her job as a librarian, she put a stack of paid bills out for the mail, hung up a freshly pressed outfit and taped a note to the front of the house.

“Don’t come in by yourself. Get somebody to come with you. Sorry, Love Beale.”

Her niece arrived at the house they shared in Baton Rouge, La., to find police already there. Golson had killed herself with a gunshot to the head.

“Every single day it makes me feel like I wish I could have done something,” Jane Golsan Ray said, recalling her aunt’s death eight years ago.

The elderly are the highest risk population in the country for suicide. But few suicide-prevention programs target them — a result, advocates say, of scarce funding and lack of concern for older Americans.

And mental heath experts say the number of elderly suicides is likely to climb as baby boomers enter their twilight years.

The overall U.S. suicide rate is 11 per 100,000 people. But for those 65 and older, that figure rises to 14 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which based its findings on 2004 data, the most recent available.

Older adults are less likely to seek help and are more lethal in their suicide attempts. So experts say special care is needed to reach out.

How help came

Dale Smith, 67, said he might not be alive if not for a suicide-prevention program in Spokane, Wash.

Two years ago, he attended a meeting at his retirement complex where everyone filled out a screening form for depression, a key risk factor for suicide.

Based on his answers, a caseworker and psychiatrist later visited Smith at his home, where they discussed what turned out to be a lifetime of depression. They developed a plan of medication and therapy that Smith says probably saved his life.

But many older Americans have fewer options for treatment than younger people.

“It’s a not-so-subtle social-political assignment of resources,” said Donna Cohen, a professor in the Department of Aging and Mental Health at the University of South Florida.

Ten states passed laws last year intended to curb suicide among children and young adults. But only two — New Jersey and New Mexico — passed laws addressing suicide among the elderly, according to Suicide Prevention Action Network USA, a national advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

Depression is underdetected at all ages, mental health groups say. But much more funding is available for treating younger people, including $82 million in federal money approved in 2004.

The situation prompted Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who lost his father to suicide, to propose funding more suicide-prevention programs for the elderly and changing a Medicare coverage rule that forces seniors to pay more for outpatient mental health services than other medical care.