[Cancer and suicide]

The risk of suicide seems to be higher among cancer patients than in the general public. The four large studies available on this subject concern either the prevalence of cancer among death by suicide or the rate of death by suicide among cancer patients collected by a population cancer registry compared to the rate of suicide in the general population. In these studies an increased risk of suicide has been noted especially among men over 60 with advanced tumors and in whom the diagnosis of cancer has been made recently.