• Ajit Shah and Ravi Bhat.
• University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. ajit.shah@wlmht.nhs.uk
• Int Psychogeriatr. 2008 Dec 1;20(6):1230-7.

BackgroundElderly suicide rates may be influenced by mental health service provision.MethodsA cross-national study examining the hypothesis that the relationship between elderly suicide rates and markers of mental health service provision would be curvilinear (inverted-U shaped curve) and fit the quadratic equation y = a + bx - cx2 (where y is the elderly suicide rate, x is a marker for mental health service provision, and a, b and c are constants) was undertaken by utilizing data from the World Health Organization.ResultsThe relationship between the logarithm of suicide rates in both sexes in both the elderly age-bands and the percentage of the total health budget spent on mental health, the total number of psychiatric beds per 10,000 population and the total number of psychiatrists per 10,000 population were curvilinear (inverted U-shaped curve) and fitted the quadratic equation y = a + bx - cx2 with statistical significance.ConclusionsThe direction of the causal relationship could be examined in longitudinal studies, after further improvement in levels of mental health service provision, in individual countries segregated by low and high levels of existing mental health service provision.

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