91% of middle-aged men who committed suicide were seeking professional help for problems in their lives, including 50% who were seeing a mental health specialist. This idea that suicidal men are hiding out with a smile on their face until they snap is a myth and amounts to victim blaming.

Oncefa2 · 2021-06-01T14:34:06+00:00

This is a different study from the one that was posted two days ago (here), which just goes to show that the data and evidence is pretty consistent about this.

The relevant quote from the paper:

91% had been in contact with at least one service or agency at some time. This was most often with primary care (i.e. GP; 199, 82%), followed by mental health services (120, 50%), the emergency department (80, 33%) and justice system agencies (73, 30%)†

These are "overlapping" and include men who had been to more than one service. Obviously the 30% who were in contact with law enforcement (meaning a parole officer, the police, or prison) may not have been "voluntary" but it does mean that these are men who can be identified and helped.

Likewise we can't really know if these men who had gone to their doctor were asking about mental health. But even in that case it does show that these men were seeking help for their health generally, and could have been pushed by their doctors to see a therapist. It's also likely that many of those men were simply waiting to see a psychiatrist at that point after receiving a referral from their doctor. 66% already had a psychiatric diagnosis and 53% had expressed suicidal ideation (basically they had told a healthcare professional that they were suicidal).

Another interesting stat is that 36% of the men had family or relationship problems, primarily in the form of a recent divorce. Many of those men had financial and housing difficulties as a result of their divorce. Many reported parental alienation (from their children) by the mother.

This is consistent with a different study that put that number at 40%.

All these stats are for the previous 12 months before their death.

It seems everyone is worried about women when they get divorced, especially if they have enough money. Well that money is forcefully taken out of the pockets of these men and that is clearly a contributing factor to the suicide epidemic.

Family / relationship problems were the single largest identifiable cause of suicide in this study.

In addition, 45% were living alone, and 11% self-reported social isolation as a problem in their lives. 57% experienced at least one type of economic problem: either unemployment, housing problems, or general financial problems.

ElegantDecline · 2021-06-01T17:15:02+00:00

I don't know if any others in here have had the experience of going to therapy out of desperation to seek some help, and the therapist' cold uncaring detached (often subtly victim-blaming) attitude made you feel like you literally ran all out of hope. Like this last ditch effort just confirms for you that there is no help or way out. That is the feeling that crappy therapists can leave us with. If even "the professional" can't help us... who can?

I have been told I was "treatment resistant" with a dismissive look, many years ago. Most therapists are worthless. completely worthless. They are geared with society's and think thanks' interest in mind, not the patients' interest.

I had to fight for survival on my own. The answer is to seek other men like you. And to teach each other to open up and talk and listen to each other like the brothers that we are.

ThatPollution492 · 2021-06-01T20:10:49+00:00

Also just goes to show that therapy isn’t the miracle cure for all Reddit constantly pretends it is.

mhandanna · 2021-06-01T22:36:45+00:00

Please try and get this on main stream non MRA forums and reddits. A common misconception is that there is no interest in mens issues.... that is wrong, while of course there are challenges like gamma bias, male disposability there are many mens initiatives etc that get overwhelming support when presented properly (even from funders, businessness, poltiicians e.g. look at X for boys, ladsneeddads, many local boys groups etc) and no I dont mean making them mens lib blame men type (I'll post some links about these soon about what we can learn from these people doing well in MRA) they just need more amplyfying and more resources to them.... sometimes you need to change language a little depending on audience. To be a good MRA you dont need to do things under a MRA label - MRA is not just "MRA" - we are not idealogues like many feminsits can be who are hell bent on making everyone say they are a feminsits.... infact if we didnt have all these anti male biases, we wouldnt even need MRA as MRA issues could be fixed under the normal processes e.g. domestic violence would look at male and female victims if it wasnt run by feminsits who distorted the narrative so that in the UK men get 0.5% (really) of funding and that funding is not really helping men anyway its more blaming them

so for example reducing road traffic deaths is an MRA activity (and overall good thing), so is reducing drug overdoses, alcohol deaths you name it (as a side not this is good as if you look at MRA in this way MRA is doing well, e.g. in past 20 years, drowning, RTAs, workplace deaths, falls from heights, infant mortality and myriad other things are way way way down in many countries... all MRA issues and things.... and this is global we are set to eradicate absolute poverty in a few years [covid stopped this a little] and this has gone down from 95% in around 1900s to less than 10% now, or e.g. infant mortality in Africa now is what it was in Europe a few decades a go etc)

skirted_dork · 2021-06-01T19:58:49+00:00

My biggest problem was money. Unfortunately there's no free or affordable therapists in Canada. I finally managed to get help by doing zoom sessions with a therapist in my home country (Brazil). Instead of paying 120$ per session, I was paying 100$ per month!

2021-06-02T10:01:33+00:00

As an unemployed man my mental health is linked to money problems more then anything else. All of these therapies/drugs etc won't help because as a man I want to seek real solutions but I'm not a politician I can't convince the government to invest in my town and create jobs. I live in a shitty grim Northern English town where jobs are hard to come by. A lot of the issues men are facing are not because of ''toxic masculinity'', rather serious economical & institutional discrimination and biases against men.

DanteLivra · 2021-06-01T22:59:39+00:00

End male disposability by targeting it's enabling mechanisms like victim blaming and male gender roles.

adam-l · 2021-06-02T09:05:38+00:00

Warren Farrell had a shocking insight in The Myth Of Male Power: that there is a spike in male suicides around the age that their gender's role is starting to get clear.

Itasenalm · 2021-06-01T16:37:51+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong or if I’ve misunderstood something, but isn’t it still possible that, like me, men struggling with their mental health are showing a smile at all times except in professional settings? I agree that the way it is most often used, saying that is a form of victim blaming, but calling attention to victims who feel it is their only choice (due to things like social stigma or past traumas where someone took advantage of your “openness”) and acknowledging it as a thing that exists doesn’t seem inherently hostile to me.

peanutbutterjams · 2021-06-02T00:21:50+00:00

Great data and a nice bit of cold water to splash on someone during a debate on 'toxic masculinity'.

a-man-from-earth · 2021-06-01T18:29:00+00:00

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MrElderwood · 2021-06-02T04:21:44+00:00

I totally agree.

I'm waiting for my 7th(!) course of therapy in a decade or so, and the last year has been the toughest in the last 20 years of suffering with what is now called MDD. Pretty safe to say mine is treatment resistant too, meds and therapy - nothing has ever helped for more than 3 months.

It started when I was 17 and I'm almost 45 (hurray, right in the suicide 'sweet-spot'!).

Getting to the end of my rope if I'm honest, so I can completely understand this studies findings!

2021-06-02T16:04:37+00:00

Trans dude here in his thirties. I’ve been in mental health therapy at some capacity for over ten years now and have experienced the systems as both genders. A major factor in these issues is the lack of training predominantly female social workers and therapists (some who statistically have more than likely had at least some kind of bad experience with a man over the course of their lifetime) seem to have when it comes to treating men. In general, a man having a mental breakdown IS going to be scarier looking to a female therapist than a woman experiencing the same issue. Pair a female therapist’s fear with the escalation that can happen if law enforcement gets involved and you have a recipe for the abandoning of treatment and/or a disaster involving the real scary shit.

I’ve thought a lot about the differing qualities of treatment I’ve received looking female vs looking male and the only somewhat speedy solution I can find is to get more men practicing in the mental health field’s front lines (and not just the medical and security support). This change is only going to happen in large enough quantities if it a) becomes financially more accessible to train for and b) the women already in these fields are taught to treat men in their field with the same respect men are trained to show them (aka equal difficulty levels of diversity training homework for everyone until it sticks).

I shouldn’t have had to deal with the shock of being treated like a criminal for having panic attacks after a decade of being treated like someone who needed a hug whenever they happened, but that’s exactly what happened as soon as my voice went deeper.

America has to get its act together on this issue because the consequences aren’t something only one of the population’s halves will have to (and already) deal with

BloomingBrains · 2021-06-03T06:44:47+00:00

Totally believe it. I tried to get help once and they didn't do anything to actually help me, just practiced "talk therapy." I did a little research and found out this is known to not be effective to the male brain, which is largely problem-solving oriented (which makes sense, all those men evidently went there to solve a problem). And also the mental health industry is really feminized in the sense that its mostly women, and the few men in it are pigeonholed by guidelines and training to only use the female-friendly therapy style. So until we totally change the way mental health is approached for men then this will probably continue to be the case.

rabel111 · 2021-06-01T23:29:30+00:00

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