- TUESDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) — Cancer patients are at
increased risk for suicide, according to three new studies.

In the first study, researchers at the University of Washington
analyzed U.S. data from 1973 to 2002 and found that the suicide rate among
cancer patients was 31.4 per 100,000 person-years, compared to 16.7 per
100,000 person-years in the general population.

Higher suicide rates were associated being male, white and older at the
time of cancer diagnosis. Patients with the highest suicide rates were
those with lung, stomach, oral/pharyngeal and larynx cancers. Suicide risk
was greatest within the first five years after diagnosis but remained
elevated for up to 15 years after diagnosis.

The second study found that older Americans with cancer are more than
twice as likely to commit suicide as those without cancer. The Harvard
School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School study compared 128 New
Jersey residents, age 65 and older, who committed suicide between 1994 and
2002 and 1,280 living people in the same age group.

The suicide risk was 2.3 times higher among cancer patients than among
those who were cancer-free. This increased risk held true even after the
researchers adjusted for age, sex, race, medical and psychiatric
illnesses, and use of prescription medications.

The cancer patients in the study who committed suicide were more likely
to have advanced metastatic disease, and two-thirds of them used a firearm
to commit suicide. Most of the patients who committed suicide had seen a
physician in the month before their death, and 25 percent had seen a
doctor within a week before their suicide.

A third study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in the
United Kingdom found that cancer patients are at increased risk for
suicidal thoughts. The survey of 2,924 cancer patients receiving
outpatient care found that nearly 8 percent reported suicidal thoughts
persisted for at least several days over the previous two weeks. A similar
survey of the general population in Australia found that only 2.6 percent
of respondents reported having similar thoughts.

The University of Edinburgh team found that suicidal thoughts among
cancer patients were associated with having substantial emotional distress
or pain, but not with cancer severity. Better management of patients'
emotional distress and pain may improve quality of life and reduce suicide
risk, the researchers concluded.

The research was published online Monday in the Journal of Clinical
Oncology.

More attention needs to be given to suicidal thoughts and attempts by
cancer patients, Dr. Timothy Quill, a professor of medicine, psychiatry
and medical humanities at the University of Rochester Medial Center, said
in an accompanying editorial.

“It is important to ask about suicidal thoughts regularly, especially
when disease is worsening, symptoms are increasing, or the patient is
entering a more serious phase of illness … Creating an environment where
these issues can be openly explored without being judged is critical,”
Quill wrote.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about cancer and depression.