Urban planners urged to build social living spaces for the elderly to cut suicide rates

Urban planners have been urged to do their part to create a living environment suitable for the city's elderly, who are nearly twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the population.

In particular, experts in suicide prevention said, urban neighbourhoods should be designed to promote socialising among residents.

The suicide rate of those aged at least 60 - although it has declined slightly in recent years - still stood at 21.6 for every 100,000 people last year, compared with the overall rate of 12.3.

The University of Hong Kong's Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention said elderly people who lived alone but socialised with neighbours reported a "significantly higher" level of life satisfaction than those who did not.

"That's why urban planning and housing design should enable community integration and facilitate people to meet each other," the centre's director, Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai, said.

But he said design of community space in many parts of the city did not meet the needs of elderly people.

The design of homes for the elderly needed a rethink, he said.