Cancer patients are more likely to commit suicide

According to a sobering finding of a new Canadian study published in the Oct. 19 online issue of the Annals of Oncology, cancer patients are more than twice as likely to take their own lives compared to those in the general population.
The rate in the study worked out to be 19 out of every 1,000 male cancer patients and 4 out of every 1,000 female patients. The overall rate of suicide was about 2 to 2.5 times that of the general U.S. population. In this population, males committed suicide at 4 to 5 times the rate of females, which is consistent with the suicide rate in the overall American population.

According to this research, "the high-risk patient was male with head or neck cancer or myeloma, advanced stage, with little social or cultural support and limited treatment options."