> while adults 85 and older, regardless of gender, are the second most likely age group to die from suicide. The rate is high, but the actual numbers are very

> while adults 85 and older, regardless of gender, are the second most likely age group to die from suicide. The rate is high, but the actual numbers are very low, because there aren't many people over the age of 85. https://imgur.com/a/iktpfjS https://imgur.com/a/iktpfjS This is an ongoing tragedy, but not because the rate is high. It's because suicide is mostly preventable, and many of these people will be in closer contact with health care providers. It seems like there are years and years where action could be taken. I can't speak to the US's approach to suicide prevention (other than to say it appears mostly incoherent from outside) but they should be paying some attention to depression, social isolation, and suicidal thinking in older people, and I'd be surprised if this was absent from the strategies. But they will be putting it in context: not many people over the age of 85 die by suicide. Thousands and thousands of people between the ages of 25 - 50 die by suicide. So, from what I can tell over the age of 80 there were about 2500 deaths by suicide in 2017. For the ages 45-49 it was over 4000 people. For 50-54 it was over 4000 people. And for 55-59 it was nearly 4500 people. https://imgur.com/a/iktpfjS https://imgur.com/a/iktpfjS One of the problems with suicide articles being posted to HN is that most people here have no idea how suicide is defined across the US, nor how it varies by counties and states. I certainly don't, and it makes talking about the data really hard.