NEW YORK — Suicide is more common among older Americans than any other age group. The statistics are daunting. While people 65 and older account for 12 percent of the population, they represent 16 percent to 25 percent of the suicides. Four out of five suicides in older adults are men. And among white men over 85, the suicide rate - 50 per 100,000 men - is six times that of the general population.

Yet, says Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, "If you consider only major depression as the antecedent of elder suicide, you'll miss 20 to 40 percent of cases in which there is no sign of mental illness."

Kennedy, who is also affiliated with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, recently directed a symposium here on preventing suicide in older adults, designed to alert both mental health and primary care practitioners to the often subtle signs that an older person may try to end it all.

THE WARNING SIGNS In interviews, he and other symposium presenters noted that detecting suicidal impulses in older people often depended on the ability of family members and friends to recognize warning signs and act on them. According to Gregory Brown, a suicide specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, in studies of what preceded elder suicides, "suicide ideation" - the wish to die or thoughts of killing themselves - appears not to have been taken seriously. In 75 percent of cases, the suicide victims "had told family members or acquaintances of their intention to kill themselves," Brown said.