Exploration of related factors of suicide ideation in hospitalized older adults

BACKGROUND: With the rapid aging of the population structure, and the suicide ideation rate also increasing year by year, the ratio of people over 65 to the total number of deaths is increasing yearly. The study provides a reference for researchers interested in older adults’ care to explore SI further affecting older adults in the future and provide a reference for qualitative research methods or interventional measures. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to explore the influence of mental health status, life satisfaction, and depression status on suicidal ideation (SI) among hospitalized older adults. METHODS: In a cross-sectional correlation study, taking inpatients over 65 years old in a regional teaching hospital in eastern Taiwan, and the BSRS-5 ≧ 5 points of the screening cases, a total of 228 older adults agree to conduct data analysis in this study. Mainly explore the influence of personal characteristics, mental health status, life satisfaction, and depressed mood on SI among the hospitalized older adults. The basic attributes of the cases used in the data, mental health status, cognitive function, quality of life, depression, and suicide ideation, the data obtained were statistically analyzed with SPSS 20/Windows, and the descriptive statistics were average, standard deviation, percentage, median, etc. In the part of inference statistics, independent sample t-test, single-factor analysis of variance, Pearson performance difference correlation, and logistic regression analysis were used to detect important predictors of SI. RESULTS: Research results in (1) 89.5% of hospitalized older adults have a tendency to depression. 2.26.3% of the older adults had SI. (2) Here are significant differences in the scores of SI among hospitalized older adults in different economic status groups and marital status groups. (3) The age, marital status, and quality of life of the hospitalized older adults were negatively correlated with SI; economic status, self-conscious health, mental health, and depression were positively correlated with SI. (4) The results of the mental health status and SI is (r = .345, p < .001), higher the score on the BSRS-5 scale, the higher the SI. The correlation between the depression scale score (SDS-SF) and SI was (r = .150, p < .05), the higher the depression scale score, the higher the SI. CONCLUSION: The results of the study found that there was a statistically significant correlation between SI in older adults and age, marital status, economic status, mental health, quality of life, and depression, and also showed that they might interact with each other; the older adults in BSRS-5, GDS-SF, quality of life scale scores have statistically significant differences as essential predictors of SI. The results of this study suggest that medical staff can use the BSRS-5 scale to quickly screen and evaluate the mental health status of older adults, hoping to detect early and provide preventive measures, thereby improving the quality of life of older adults. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-023-04478-w.