Resumo

RIBOT REYES, Victoria de la Caridad; ALFONSO ROMERO, Maritza; RAMOS ARTEAGA, Martha Elena  e  GONZALEZ CASTILLO, Antonio. Suicide in elderly people. Rev haban cienc méd [online]. 2012, vol.11, suppl.5, pp. 699-708. ISSN 1729-519X.

Introduction: suicide in elderly people is considered a health problem in many countries of the world. Objectives: characterize suicide behaviour in elderly people by explaining its different variants and the epidemiological situation of this fact. Point out the risk factors associated to suicide in old people. Material and Methods: it was made a bibliographical revision using different methods like: documentary analysis, analysis synthesis, and induction deduction. These methods, taking as starting point a map of concepts, allowed us to arrive to conclusions about this topic. Results: Suicide definition was established. The two major types of suicides were described: Genuine suicide and parasuicide. Several epidemiological data about suicide were pointed out such as: From 1,1 million people who commit suicide the greatest percents belong to elderly people. Different risk factors affecting suicide behaviour were also described. They can be divided into medical, psychiatric, psychological, familiar and socio-environmental risk factors. Conclusions: Suicide behaviour in old people has its own distinctive features given by less suicidal attempts than young people. The use of more fatal methods and the fact that old people give less warning signals making more difficult to detect the suicidal attempt. Depression is the main risk factor associated or not to others like invalidating diseases and familiar or personal losses.

Palavras-chave : old man; suicide; elderly people.

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