REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Mood Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1610730
This article is part of the Research TopicMultidimensional Approaches to Suicide Prevention: Innovations, Challenges, and Future DirectionsView all 15 articles
Advances in the assessment and study of suicide in late-life depression
Provisionally accepted
- 1Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, China
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With the aging global population, the prevalence of late-life depression (LLD) has shown a significant upward trend. The prolonged presence of a depressed mood can lead to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, thereby enhancing suicidal impulses and behaviors, which seriously affect the physical and mental health of the older population. However, current research on suicide has mainly focused on adolescents and adults, resulting in a lack of data on the identification, assessment, and intervention of suicide risk in LLD. LLD treatments include psychotherapy, medication, physiotherapy, and Internet intervention techniques. First-line antidepressants, in addition to cognitive behavioral therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, have been shown to be effective in patients with LLD. In this study, we review the research progress in the following three aspects: symptomatological characteristics, assessment tools, and treatment methods of suicide in LLD, providing a reference for clinical workers and researchers in clinical practice.
Keywords: older adults, Depression, late-life depression, Suicide, Assessment tools, Treatment methods
Received: 12 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Mao, Wang, Zhang, Cao and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Enyan Yu, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, China
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