Zolpidem as a high risk factor for elderly suicide in South Korea

Abstract

Backgrounds

South Korea, a nation with rapidly aging population, has the highest suicide rates in the world, and the elderly have a suicide rate three times higher than the national average. We classified the drugs ingested for suicide attempts by age groups and compare the clinical outcomes between non-elderly and elderly patients who attempted suicide by ingesting drugs.

Materials and methods

Data were obtained from the nationwide Emergency Department-Based Injury Surveillance of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, South Korea between January 2011 and December 2016.

Results

There were 12,104 patients who attempted suicide by ingesting drugs, of whom the elderly (73.5%) ingested more sedatives and hypnotics than the non-elderly (53.9%); of these drugs, zolpidem ingestion was higher in the elderly than the non-elderly. Conversely, the non-elderly ingested more antipsychotics and antidepressants (15.9%) and analgesics (10.8%) than the elderly (7.4% and 2.8%, respectively). The elderly had longer hospital stay, higher intensive care unit (ICU) admission rate, and higher mortality rate than the non-elderly: more elderly patients (30.2%) were admitted to the ICU than the non-elderly (15.7%); the duration of hospital stays was 6.27 ± 11.35 days in the elderly and 8.94 ± 14.85 days in the non-elderly; and the mortality rate was 0.4% in the non-elderly and 3.0% in the elderly.

Conclusion

Findings suggest that zolpidem has become the greatest risk factor for the elderly Koreans in suicide attempts. Further prevention efforts are needed to prevent suicide among the elderly.

Keywords:

• Elderly
• emergency department
• hypnotics
• sedatives
• suicide
• zolpidem

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by Research of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ED based injury in-depth surveillance).

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

AUTHOR NOTES

Eun Kim, Jae Hee Lee, and Duk Hee Lee, Department of Emergency Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The following information is supplied regarding data availability: The Korean Center for Disease Control (KCDC) is the authority for accessing the data analyzed. There are ethical restrictions on sharing a dataset because the data contain potentially identifying information. The KCDC (http://www.cdc.go.kr) can be contacted for data access via the Injury Research Team email ([email protected]) or by calling 82-43-719-7407.