Professors Manthorpe and Iliffe raise some important points regarding suicide prevention for older people and the provision of support that I and my colleagues agree with. For example the authors comment that support should be available to practitioners working with patients at risk and where patients have died by suicide. While we did not discuss this in our paper we did find that two-thirds of GPs reported being affected by the suicide of a patient, but that there was a lack of formal support systems available. Service provision and suicide prevention in the old is certainly an area that would benefit from further research.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2010.