WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (The Cox News Service) -- A study in the May edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that suicide in persons age 80 and older is more prevalent among those who have been hospitalized than in those who have not.

A review of data on nearly 1.8 million people age 52 and older revealed that about two-thirds of the oldest subjects who committed suicide had been hospitalized for an illness in the previous two years.

This is the first study to examine this type of association between hospitalization and suicide in older adults.

According to investigators, "a substantial part of the greater suicide rate in the oldest old than in the middle-aged can be attributed to the increased prevalence of medical hospitalization." Further data show increased frequency of illness with age could explain part of this suicide risk, especially in women.

Researchers conclude that medical health care staff would play an important role in identifying those at risk.

Another study challenges the notion that ethnic differences and inherent biases are responsible for a lower number of depression diagnoses in the African-American elderly.

Researchers surveyed nearly 180 primary care providers, randomly assigning them to view one of four videos exhibiting commonly accepted traits of a depressed older adult. The actors used in the videos worked from the same script and differed only by race and/or sex. Eighty-five percent of providers correctly diagnosed the "patient" on the video they were assigned.

"Primary care providers are just as likely to diagnose and treat depression in older African-Americans as in whites, suggesting that bias based simply on apparent patient race is not a likely explanation for the lower rates of depression diagnosis and treatment in older African-Americans," the study said.

Copyright 2005 The Cox News Service. All rights reserved.