Do cancer patients ever get suicidal thoughts?
The statistics on suicide show that the suicide rate for white men increases with age, and that white men over 65 are about 4 or 5 times more likely to commit suicide than older white women. Illness, loss of wife or other life partner, family and financial difficulties, alcoholism, and comparable difficulties intensify a man’s urges toward wanting out. An article Suicide and Cancer in Late Life (Vol. 41, No 12, December 1990) published in the journal Hospital and Community Psychiatry concerned suicide among older men who were, or suspected that they were, in advanced stages of cancer. The article’s authors are Yeates Conwell, M.D., Eric D. Caine, M.D., and Kurt Olsen, Ph.D. Drs. Conwell and Caine hold professorships and Dr. Olsen holds an assistant professorship at prestigious academic or health care institutions. The article’s Abstract, in full, states: In a controlled psychological autopsy study of suicide in late life, eight cases in which the victim’s belief that he had cancer play
