A replication of the relationship between adversity earlier in life and elderly suicide rates using five years cross-national data

BACKGROUND: Although life-long adversity has been suggested as a protective factor for elderly suicides, studies examining protective factors for elderly suicides are scarce. A cross-national study examining the relationship between elderly suicide rates and several proxy measures of adversity earlier in life was undertaken to replicate earlier findings by using five consecutive years data on elderly suicide rates from a more recent data set and by adding two more proxy measures of adversity early in life. METHODS: The relationship between elderly suicide rates and five proxy measures of adversity earlier in life was examined using data from the World Health Organization and the United Nations data banks with Spearman’s correlation coefficient. The five proxy measures of adversity early in life were: the percentage of children under the age of 5 years who were under weight, the percentage of children under the age of 5 years who were under height, the percentage of infants with low birth weight babies, the percentage of the general population with sustainable access to improved sanitation and the percentage of the general population with sustainable access to an improved water source. RESULTS: Generally, elderly suicide rates were lower in countries with higher adversity early in life. The only exceptions were in females aged 75+ years where this association only approached statistical significance for the percentage of children under the age of 5 years who were under weight and the percentage of children under the age of 5 years who were under height. CONCLUSIONS: The current study using a more recent data set and a five years data on elderly suicide rates along with two additional proxy measures of adversity early in life was able to replicate the findings of the earlier study. This suggests that the findings of the earlier study were accurate and robust.