An editorial in theBritish Medical Journalin 1962 drew attention to the fact that research workers have taken relatively little interest in the psychoses of the elderly. The editorial commented on the important paper by Kay and Roth (1961), which analysed the condition known as “late paraphrenia”. Since the publication of this editorial, no significant contribution has been added to the analysis of this illness.

SynopsisA post mortem enquiry has been made into the social family and clinical circumstances of 50 individuals who, according to a coroner's verdict, killed themselves in Brighton. A dimensional analysis of the 123 variables thus collected suggested the possibility of three distinct types of suicide: ‘depressive suicide’, ‘sociopathic suicide’ and ‘physical illness suicide’. The reliability of this typology has been checked by the analysis of 55 selected variables for a total of 193 cases considered by the same coroner. A cluster analysis has confirmed that the data contain at least three independent types of suicide. Some implications for the prevention of suicide are discussed.