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A few times a week I will be copying a chapter out of the Reference Book of Men's Issues for visibility and discussion here.

Section 2: Life, Death, and Safety

Chapter 6: Suicide

Overview

Like drug/alcohol addiction, there are many women who commit suicide but the fact is that men still kill themselves at disproportionately high rates.

One study reports that although rates of fatal suicide behaviour are higher among men, rates of nonfatal suicide behaviour are higher among women. It says that women have higher rates of suicidal thoughts while there was no gender difference in suicide planning or suicide attempts [1]. The implications of this are not clear, but it is relevant to mention. Do men choose different, more deadly methods? Are they more "certain" or hopeless when engaging in suicidal behaviours, resulting in higher fatality rates? Either way, the end result is more dead men than dead women.

Examples/evidence

Suicide is the single biggest cause of death for men aged 20-45 in England/Wales [2]. In Canada in 2011, the rate of suicide among men was three times higher than among women [3]. In the United States in 2012, men were almost four times more likely to kill themselves. The graph below provides historical data on suicide in the United States [4].

Images: http://i.imgur.com/ikXWibu.png

Middle-aged men and poor men are especially at risk, according to the Department of Health in England [5]. Unfortunately, many people's response to the issue of male suicide is to be more critical than supportive [6].

The Samaritans report says most people have no idea what they can do to combat male suicide. Too many they say, simply “ 'upbraid' men for being 'resistant to help-seeking' or 'not talking about their feelings.' ”

Mental-health specialists especially, says the Samaritans report, “need to move from ‘blaming men for not being like women,’ ” to designing projects and public services that can help them.

[1] https://archive.is/ExTKL ("Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among Adults Aged ≥18 Years --- United States, 2008-2009" from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

[2] https://archive.is/qwkgF ("More Statistics, Yet Still No Strategy..." from CALM: Campaign Against Living Miserably)

[3] http://bit.ly/1u1g1mf and http://bit.ly/1BVOxVx (“Suicides and suicide rate, by sex and by age group” from Statistics Canada)

[4] [dead link] http://bit.ly/1rKWJ4R (from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Data & Statistics Fatal Injury Report for 2012)

[5] https://archive.is/vjgx1 (The Guardian article "Suicide numbers rise sharply, especially among middle-aged men")

[6] https://archive.is/jXt36 (Vancouver Sun article "Men and suicide: The silent epidemic")