Study shows that young people with cancer commit suicide at a greater rate

Lonely girlLonely girl.Photo : Sara Johannessen / SCANPIX NB! Modellklarert

A new Norwegian study shows that people who get cancer before the age of 25 years are more than twice as likely as others to commit suicide.

There are already completed studies demonstrating that adult cancer patients have a doubled suicide risk.

Researchers in Bergen and Oslo showed that children and adolescents have more than a doubled risk of suicide, reported VG newspaper.

‘We know that many people who have chronic health conditions that are very difficult to live with may not feel they are being taken care of and have nowhere to turn in society’, said PhD student, Maria Winther Gunnes at the University of Bergen.

The research group consisted of people born between 1965 and 1985. Among the 1.2 million people were 5,440 who’d been diagnosed with cancer before the age of 25. Of these, 24 committed suicide.

‘It is important to reach out with this information so that we can ensure better awareness and monitoring of this group’, said Winther Gunnes.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today