노인 자살 Senior Suicide

We need a definition of what age constitutes senior citizenship. Just as pediatricians divide children into newborns, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school-age children, adolescents, and young adults, we should also consider health care for the elderly by dividing them into sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety-year-olds. As a doctor, I’ve lived to the age of ninety, and I’ve learned for the first time that physiological, mental, physical, economic, and social changes occur each year as we age. In pediatrics, all children experience differences in growth and development depending on their age, and preventive measures also vary with age. Therefore, children are regularly screened at the pediatrician’s office. I believe we need to enact a law promoting senior health that ensures that all children and guardians regularly care for their mental, physical, socioeconomic, food, clothing, shelter, disease prevention, and love. Just as parents shouldn’t leave their one-year-old children home alone, neither should they leave their sick ninety-year-old parents home alone. When older people age, they can experience physical and mental aches and pains, lethargy, and a sense of burden. They can also develop mental illnesses such as depression. They can also experience chronic physical illness, pain, financial difficulties, isolation from family members, social isolation, interpersonal conflicts, verbal, emotional, and behavioral problems, a high risk of suicide, loss of relationships with spouses and other family members, conflicts in interpersonal relationships, frustration when the need to belong is not met, a sense of being a burden, and sadness and anhedonia in old age. We need to support and love the elderly mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially.

drleepediatrics.com

8/2/2025

Dr. Lee Sang-won, a pediatrician.