In the United Kingdom, elderly suicides accounted for 17 percent of all suicides in 1995. Elderly suicide rates are likely to rise as the baby boom generation ages. Elderly men tend to have fewer social networks than elderly women and are more likely to suffer the effects of isolation and withdrawal. Therefore, they are less likely to seek out emotional support and assistance when suffering psychological stress. This fact also correlates with men's greater difficulty than women's in coping successfully after a spouse dies.
Emotional isolation increases an individual's risk for depression.
In cases of murder-suicide, the pressures of caregiving add even more stress. Notes left by husbands regularly cite fears over a wife's declining health or an inability to care for her. Often husbands themselves are in failing health. In a 1995 case in San Diego, a husband called his family doctor just before turning the gun on himself and told the doctor he could no longer stand to see his wife in such pain, but could not bear the thought of living without her. For couples who have lived together for 50 or 60 years, the potential for forced separation is a devastating thought.