Loading...
Researchers have found higher suicide rates in cancer patients than in the general population; this trend is assumed to reflect the despair of coping with progressive incurable illness. However, in three new studies, investigators define a more complex association between suicide and cancer and conclude that suicidality often troubles long-term cancer survivors as well as terminally ill patients.
Seattle researchers retrospectively analyzed suicide rates among more than 2 million patients listed in a nationwide network of tumor registries. The overall suicide rate in registry patients was twice that in the general population; relative risk was highest in the first 5 years after cancer diagnoses, but it remained elevated for as long as 15 yea…