00:00 Suicide in our oldest old is one of the undiscussed issues in Australia.
00:06 Whilst we've had success in reducing suicide rates for many parts of the population, if
00:13 you look over the decades, we have really not succeeded in reducing the rates for our
00:19 oldest old, which contrasts the United Kingdom, who have managed to reduce their rates.
00:24 So I think that's important.
00:26 There's opportunity here to do something.
00:28 We're going to find the what that something is.
00:31 And COVID, I think, has brought into context many of the factors we think about, that why
00:38 the older old may be vulnerable.
00:40 But we need to also not forget, they're actually incredibly resilient.
00:44 The elderly hope we do things that when we look forward and put ourselves in their position,
00:49 we think we couldn't cope with.
00:51 And the vast majority do.
00:53 And that's what we need to build on.
00:55 So are we now just starting to see the impact of COVID on older people's mental health,
01:00 Rod?
01:01 How great was the worry about that age group going into the pandemic?
01:05 The worry was very high going into the pandemic.
01:08 There was a number of articles written about the risk for older people, because we know
01:15 in the SARS pandemic in Hong Kong, older people did fare badly.
01:20 The good news is older people in Australia actually have fared much better than was expected.
01:26 We haven't seen a marked increase, although we have seen an increase in rate amongst our
01:32 oldest women, which is of concern.
01:34 But our oldest men remain the people who are at the highest risk of suicide.
01:41 Rod, is there a different response to the idea of suicide among people in later life
01:47 than for younger people?
01:50 Unfortunately, we know there is, particularly amongst people who are responding.
01:55 We know that in younger people, when people talk about suicide, there was a response of
01:59 what can we do?
02:01 There is too often a response when an older person talks about not wanting to live of
02:07 I can understand that rather than what can I do.
02:11 And that can reinforce the lack of hope by the person, rather than actually look at what
02:16 can be done.
02:18 And the good news is that we know that there is lots that can be done for the older person
02:23 who's considering suicide.
02:25 Such as?
02:27 The first thing is to actually open the discussion, to not respond as I can understand that, but
02:32 actually to ask the question of what can I do?
02:37 And then to try to connect the person to those people who can help.
02:41 So we know that loneliness, social isolation, chronic pain, a sense of lack of worth or
02:48 a sense that I'm no longer important to people are all important.
02:53 And they're all things that we can do active things for.
02:56 And that's the key thing is to give that sense of hope that we can achieve something and
03:01 then help the person to regain that hope that something can be achieved and life can be
03:06 worthwhile.
03:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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