A silent epidemic of male suicide (2011)

&gt;Al­though men die by suicide at a higher rate, women have a higher rate of attempting suicide.16 This pattern is evident among youth and persists over the lifespan.<p>Why is this? I&#x27;ve read before that modes of suicide tend to be gendered -- ie, gunshots to the head for men and overdoses for women. Is this the entire story? Are women more likely, consciously or unconsciously, to be social signaling for support than men when they attempt suicide?<p>I lost my brother to suicide three years ago. I began attending counseling this year after a protracted period of personal turmoil in its aftermath, and it&#x27;s a topic I spend a lot of thought on. When I was younger and less psychologically moored I thought of suicide as the ultimate lever I could wield over my own fate. Not so much these days, though.

Male suicides are up in the US, too. The US has about 40,000 suicides a year. &quot;Suicide is concentrated among those whom our society values least.&quot;[1]. The big jump is among white, middle-aged men and women.<p>&quot;The states with the highest suicide rates tend to be clustered in the South and the Mountain West... This suicide belt is also defined by what psychologists have dubbed a “culture of honor.” ... That means higher murder rates but even more-exaggerated suicide rates, a fact he attributes to millennia of old masculine codes meeting a disappearance of blue-collar jobs unlikely to reverse itself. Give me honor, or give me death was a safer personal motto when honor could still be readily found.&quot; - Newsweek<p>Will this be the fate of today&#x27;s &quot;brogrammers&quot; in their 40s?<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;22&#x2F;why-suicide-has-become-epidemic-and-what-we-can-do-help-237434.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;22&#x2F;why-suicide-has-become-ep...</a>

The problem is at least partly societal. A large portion of life is made up of social interaction, and men and women have very different experiences of this. People are generally nicer to women. Men are treated as being less important than women (think: women and children first). With this in mind, it&#x27;s not surprising men are more likely to kill themselves.

There are several sources for comparable US data. Examining page 6 of the PDF below demonstrates that the suicide rates for middle aged to elderly Caucasian males in the US is higher in 2014 by a factor of ~3 or in cases more compared to women and other ethnicities. Despite the prevalence of suicide in this group the issue is seldom covered by the media or addressed in public policy debates.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;nchs&#x2F;data&#x2F;hestat&#x2F;suicide&#x2F;rates_1999_2014.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;nchs&#x2F;data&#x2F;hestat&#x2F;suicide&#x2F;rates_1999_2014....</a>

I think that to a large extent this has something to do with the (mostly terrible) educational system just about everywhere in the world. Your education kind of sets a course for the rest your life and it&#x27;s a travesty that very productive years are basically squandered because the system is setup for maybe 19th century.

Is it silent?<p>The statistics and data aggregation seem pretty robust. Most governments publish data reinforcing that suicide is a huge risk factor for men.<p>I don&#x27;t think It&#x27;s a silent epidemic as much as It&#x27;s just not an important epidemic. Society doesn&#x27;t necessarily rank <i>the problem</i> of male suicide high enough to fix or fund.

It would be interesting to see incidences distributed over different types of divorce outcomes.

Is the incidence increasing over time? That wasn&#x27;t clear from what I read. It says the incidence is high but doesn&#x27;t include data about how it changes over time.

There is a decent documentary that watches a few teams respond to &quot;Gun Violence&quot; (1). It was basically a tour of people shooting themselves or their family. A bizarre left turn into mental health questions and responsibilities. It is clear that, of ~33k gun deaths (2) - most are suicides. Meanwhile, homicide is almost non-exisitant (3) - but it is all i see on the news :(<p>1) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hbo.com&#x2F;documentaries&#x2F;requiem-for-the-dead-american-spring-2014" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hbo.com&#x2F;documentaries&#x2F;requiem-for-the-dead-americ...</a><p>2) &quot;11,208 homicides (3.5 per 100,000); 21,175 suicides; 505 deaths due to accidental&#x2F;negligent discharge of a firearm; and 2818 deaths due to firearms-use with &quot;undetermined&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...</a><p>3) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zerohedge.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016-06-16&#x2F;fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zerohedge.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016-06-16&#x2F;fbi-us-homicide-rat...</a>

Why do we get mired with the attempts quagmire? If you look at depression and suicidal thoughts as a disease, the death rate is gendered.<p>Men die more from suicide yet society shows more sympathy and support for women. That makes sense since society was basically built to protect women and ensure that offspring had stable diligent parents. This leads to society enshrining the protections of women and children at the (relative) disadvantage of men.

I am a guy. I narrowly avoided suicide around 18. I should first note that I&#x27;m doing much better these days.<p>If there is anything scarier than attempting suicide, it would be the thought of surviving it. Permanent disfigurement, crippling, or chronic pain would only make life all the worse - and a second attempt would be made all the harder by well meaning family, police, and doctors. One thinks to be thorough, or to not try at all.<p>Scarier than keeping quiet about your demons, is the thought of being forced to confront them. You don&#x27;t <i>want</i> to talk and dwell on such a depressing subject, when depression is the very thing you&#x27;re trying to run from. Outward silence mirrors a desperate attempt to achieve inner silence.<p>Manly ideals such as the ability to shoulder burden, and self reliance, can worsen the problem. Why share such deeply personal problems, if you think others can&#x27;t help you with them? After all, if even you yourself can&#x27;t lick the problem - you who surely best knows yourself - what chance do others have? You&#x27;ll only depress others. You&#x27;ll only depress yourself further.<p>.<p>I survived the peak of my first depression thanks to a fear of hell. The second, by knowing my ex still cared about me, even if she did not still care to <i>be</i> with me. I couldn&#x27;t be that selfish.<p>A decade later, and long walks are for exercise and a break - not an excuse to cross tall bridges. I fight the good fight: I try to exercise. To eat well. To sleeping well and fully. To socialize regularly. To enjoy the sun. To enjoy nature. To eliminate stress. I have a career. I rarely crunch.<p>Medication would probably help. I&#x27;d still like a meaning to life. Maybe Love, again, but love is hard work - and even after all this time, is it prudent to risk a <i>third</i> heartbreak? I&#x27;m better now, and take care of myself better, but in doing so I&#x27;ve also learned a healthy amount of selfishness...<p>.<p>It&#x27;s 7AM, and I should sleep. Back to silence. I will sleep well, and wake refreshed tomorrow. Be kind to and take care of each other, and do the same for yourselves. Make friends instead of enemies, even if that means funny hobbies instead of important politics sometimes. Smile, laugh, and try to share the joys of life. They may not always shine as brightly, but it&#x27;s easier to find your way towards life if the path is at least lit.

Note for those who didn&#x27;t notice: although this appears to be the first time this has been posted to Hacker News, it was from 2011.<p>dang: Add (2011) to the title?

Men are far more likely to die from all sorts of things, esp. occupational hazards. Nobody cares.

Men are disposable. This idea is wired inside the deepest, most primal part our brains. There are a few possible solutions to this. We could evolve ourselves and change our brains. We could tip the gender population ratio in favor of women, so that men would be more sought after. The easiest way to achieve the latter is by simply giving parents the power to choose their kid&#x27;s gender. Assuming parents are rational agents, they will choose the most valuable gender for their kid, which will bring the genders into an equilibrium.

&quot;These explanations suggest that when compared with suicidal women, men who reach the point of suicidal action are: [More X, More Y, More Z].... Despite some limited theoretical and empirical support, we currently lack strong evidence to support these explanations.&quot;<p>Welp there goes the whole thread guys<p>Any follow up study?

So the reason men kill themselves is &quot;because, men?&quot; I get that is sufficient for the sort of people for whom, &quot;because, women,&quot; or &quot;because, men,&quot; is explanatory, but maybe something social changed in the last 40 years?<p>When you control for hard drugs like the mari-huana, heavy metal music, D&amp;D, violent video games, rap music, marylin manson, the fast and the furious sequels, and toxic masculinity, surely there is something that must shake out.

I wonder why an analysis of comparative rates of male&#x2F;female self-murder seems to ignore that men murder others (in the U.S.) at around 5 or 6 times the rate of women. The differences seem comparable and very related. I see postulation that men have unique problems, but not any consideration of the fact that men have shown a greater urge to kill in general.<p>I may have just missed it.