Suicide among Older Adults with Dementia: Effects of Korea’s Long-Term Care Insurance System

Sungje Moon, Mankyu Choi and Minsung Sohn
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Sungje Moon: Research Institute for Healthcare Policy, Korean Medical Association, Seoul 04373, Korea
Mankyu Choi: BK21 FOUR R&E Center for Learning Health Systems, Department of Health Policy & Management, College of Health Science, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Korea
Minsung Sohn: Department of Health and Care Administration, The Cyber University of Korea, Seoul 03051, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 12, 1-14

Abstract: South Korea recently expanded its coverage rate of long-term care insurance (LTCI) by adding a “dementia special grade” in 2014 to improve care service accessibility and extend health life for older adults with dementia. In this study, we propose a multifaceted policy to reduce the suicide risk among older adults with dementia by evaluating the effectiveness of using the long-term care services (LTCS). A sample of 62,282 older adults was selected from the “Older Adults Cohort DB” of the National Health Insurance Service. We conducted Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression to represent the yearly survival curve from 2002 to 2015 according to the individual characteristics. Difference-in-difference estimation was conducted to identify the effect of LTCS on suicide rates by using LTCS before and after 2014. The suicide risk of older adults using LTCS was about 0.256-times lower than those who did not use it (OR = 0.296, 95% CI = 0.183–0.478), whereas it increased after the expansion of the dementia grading (OR = 2.131, 95% CI = 1.061–4.280). To prevent the risk of suicide among older adults with dementia, not only did the mortality rate vary depending on the sex, activities of daily living (ADL), and type of caregiver at the individual level but appropriate national intervention and management, such as improving the accessibility of LTCS, are also needed.

Keywords: dementia; suicide; long-term care insurance; older adults; survival analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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