We hear it often that men and boys commit suicide more often than women do. When bringing this up in conversation, the fact that women attempt suicide more often is brought up as a retort.

Usually I use the male stat to push that men are more depressed, unable to handle their depression, or feeling like they have little control in their lives. However, if the female stat is true (and I believe it is), this without a doubt weakens the strength of the point.

Once the female suicide attempts statistic is brought up, the relating truth is usually pointed out: that women and girls survive their suicide attempts at a higher rate than men do. When we look into how this could be possible, we see that females are more likely to take the path of overdosing on drugs, drowning, and cutting. Males on the other hand are more likely to attempt suicide using the lethal force of a weapon, hanging, or other more violent methods.

While this is interesting, I think it is worth considering why men choose more violent ways to kill themselves. It's no doubt that media and society expects men to be much more violent than women, and if this is having a strong influence on the way our men and boys attempt suicide, this is a very big issue. Perhaps if men were not expected to be violent, they would be more likely to survive their suicide attempts, and at least some people who are dead because they couldn't handle a temporary depression could be alive today.

I've heard "women are more likely to attempt suicide as a cry for help, while men are more likely to truly attempt to end their life." That might be a fascinating truth, but I feel that without a study, this assumption is sketchy, and disrespectful to the women who sincerely wanted to escape from their lives' pain.

I wonder however how large the gender gap is in these issues. I would appreciate if anyone has any studies to put them forward. There is a lot of room for agenda pushing here, so lets try to analyse any numbers that could be off. For one, it is important to realize that someone who succeeds in committing suicide can never again contribute to the suicide attempts statistic.

Update: I just would like to point out that I posted this almost 6 hours ago, and despite the number of comments, not a single one was downvoted as of yet, and arguably none that deserve it. I think it is nice that we can talk about such a tragedy without having to worry about rude or unthoughtful people.