Washington ? Dr. Allan Anderson remembers with frustration how the retired professional who was losing his eyesight calmly explained he would kill himself once he became blind.

He didn’t wait that long.

Senior citizens commit suicide at higher rates than any other age group, and with graying Baby Boomers already more prone to suicide than other generations entering the riskiest years, psychiatrists fear that could soon worsen.

Now researchers are uncovering factors such as lack of social support, poor sleep patterns, and memory or other brain problems that sometimes hit seniors that could help primary care physicians spot elderly patients at risk of suicide and intervene.

It’s hard: Many of today’s seniors are the generation of the stiff upper lip when it comes to mental health. Ask how they’re feeling and you may hear a litany about aching joints, but they’re far less likely than younger people to admit to depression, said Anderson, a geriatric psychiatrist in Cambridge, Md.

Most are not terminally ill, and thus these are largely preventable deaths, insists Dr. Yeates Conwell, a University of Rochester specialist in elderly suicide.

“We tend to seek the simple solution: Mr. Smith killed himself because his wife died or Mrs. Jones killed herself because she was diagnosed with cancer,” but that’s seldom the real reason, he said. “We have to go beyond simple explanations and start looking … at the tapestry of older people’s lives.”

Americans 65 and older account for about 13 percent of the population but almost a fifth of all suicides. The national rate is 11 suicides for every 100,000 people, about the same for teens. But the risk steadily rises with age and most at risk are older white men: 33 of every 100,000 of them commit suicide every year, translating to 4,655 suicides in 1998 alone.

Contrast that with older black women: In 1998, fewer than 20 killed themselves, yielding a suicide rate too small to reliably compute, University of Pennsylvania researchers report in this month’s American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

What explains those dramatic differences and could psychiatrists harness whatever protected the black women into some sort of therapy for other seniors at risk?

Scientists don’t yet know for sure. But new research reported in the geriatric psychiatry journal shows while depression is a clear risk at any age, there are some special senior warning signs. No specific illness was associated with suicide, but perceived poor health is as is poor sleep quality and having fewer friends or relatives to confide in.