The suicide rate among elderly people is on the rise, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Sunday, urging the public to help tackle the issue.
The over-65 age group was the only category that showed an increase in the suicide rate last year, rising 7.7 percent from 2009, said Shih Chung-liang (石崇良), director of the Bureau of Medical Affairs, citing department statistics.
With the nation’s overall suicide rate continuing to decrease, self-inflicted death was no longer among the top 10 causes of death in the country as of last year, Shih said.
For four consecutive years, from 2006 until 2009, suicide was the ninth leading cause of death in Taiwan.
Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center chairman Lee Ming-been (李明濱) said the average suicide rate in the country reached a peak of 19.3 self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people in 2006, with the rate in the over-65 age group reaching 39.3.
In 2009, the average suicide rate shrank to 17.6 per 100,000 people, while the rate in the over-65 age bracket dropped to 35.8 per 100,000 people.
Despite a slight decline in the suicide rate among people over 65, the rate in that age group is still two to three times higher than in all other age groups nationwide, figures released by Taipei City’s Department of Health in June showed.
Shih said the DOH hopes to see the suicide rate among the elderly drop to less than 33 per 100,000 people by the end of this year.
Illness and social isolation were tagged as the major contributing factors, Shih said, adding that mental health, which is often neglected, could also be an issue.
The DOH said the nation’s suicide prevention hotlines, such as 1995, prevented 143 deaths in 2009 and saved 375 lives last year.
Most of those cases were among younger people, since such services are rarely used by the elderly, it said.
Shih urged people to keep in touch with older family members by calling them on the telephone at least once a week and stopping by for a personal visit at least once a month.
According to WHO statistics, the global suicide rate was 16 self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people in 2009. The WHO predicts that by 2020, 1.5 million people will kill themselves each year.
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
DAMAGE CONTROL: The KMT in a statement called the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters,’ after Alexander Huang said China had the right to claim it as internal waters Lawmakers and experts yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) envoy to the US Alexander Huang (黃介正) of acting as China’s stooge, after he said that Beijing has the right to claim waters beyond its maritime territory as its exclusive economic zone and that the US has no legal basis to assert that the Taiwan Strait is an “international waterway.” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said in an online post that most of the world considers the Strait an international waterway, adding that this is important for safeguarding Taiwan. “We have seen US warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
The Taichung District Court yesterday sentenced to nine years in prison an unlicensed judo coach who caused the death of a seven-year-old student after slamming him onto the ground more than a dozen times. In its decision against the coach, a man surnamed Ho (何), the court cited his lack of remorse for using excessive force against an inadequately trained child and his failure to reconcile with the parents for his role in their son’s death. Speaking on behalf of the boy’s mother, Taichung City Councilor Jacky Chen (陳清龍) said the family would appeal to a higher court. Prosecutors said that Ho on