hankyoreh

Two elderly women work pulling weeds from a stone path

One in twenty elderly South Koreans experienced suicidal impulses over the past year, a study shows.

86% were also found to perceive their own social status as at or below the median - a subjective perception that was interpreted as having an influence on stress and suicidal impulses.

The report by the research team of Yonsei University professor Nam Seok-in, titled “The Effects of Elderly People’s Class Perceptions on Suicidal Impulses and the Double Mediation Effects of Stress and Subjective Health Perceptions,” was published on Aug. 4 in the latest edition of the Health and Social Welfare Review. Its findings showed 103 out of the 1,916 participating people over 65, or 5.4%, having experienced suicidal impulses over the past years.

The study was based on data from a 2012 Korea Health Panel basic survey and a supplementary study for adult household members.

“It means that over one in twenty have thought about killing themselves, which indicates that suicidal impulses should be seen as a substantial, universal issue rather than something found in a small minority of exceptional cases among senior citizens,” Nam said.

The results also showed 86.3% of elderly people perceiving themselves as falling in the five bottom categories when classifying social status into ten categories. The investigation concerned subjective class perceptions, which are seen as more closely related to health and mental state than objective indicators.

“The findings of a 2008 study of subjective class perceptions among British elderly people found just 36% of males and 38.4% of females perceiving their own status as falling within the bottom five categories,” the report noted.

According to the report, 14.4% of participants fell in the “high-risk stress group” - with average stress scores of 2.4 or higher - while 16.1% rated their own health as “very poor” or “poor.”

“The analysts note that the lower elderly people’s subjective class perceptions are, the higher their stress levels are,” the report noted. “Higher stress levels were also associated with higher perceptions of their own health as poor and a stronger possibility of suicidal impulses.”

The report went on to suggest “encouraging job programs for the elderly as an active means of income preservation to improve elderly people’s subjective class perceptions.”

A 2014 survey of causes of death by Statistics Korea found suicide to be 1.4 to 2.9 times more common among elderly people compared to the overall population. While the overall death rate due to suicide stood at 27.3 per 100,000 people, the rates were 37.5 for those in their sixties, 57.6 for those in their seventies, and 78.6 for those eighty and over.

South Korea has had the highest elderly death rate due to suicide in the OECD for the past twelve years.

By Hwangbo Yon, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]