Feminist Myth: Women are 3 times more likely to attempt Suicide

Women are 3 times more likely to commit suicide.

For the longest time this factoid had bothered me, it's usually stated any time someone brings up that men commit suicide at much greater rates than women. The problem is, as usual for many feminist assertions, it's most often not presented with any actual sources. This makes tracking down the facts time consuming and annoying. But after hearing this factoid one too many times I decided to go looking, this is what I found.

First off starting at wikipedia we look at the page Gender differences in suicide (before August 30th 2013)

Right at the top of the article you get the factoid thrown in:

Gender differences in suicide have been shown to be significant; there are highly asymmetric rates of attempted and completed suicide between males and females.^[1] The gap, also called the gender paradox of suicidal behavior, can vary significantly between different countries.^[2] Statistics indicate that males die much more often by means of suicide than do females; however, reported suicide attempts are 3 times more common among females than males.^[3]

Following the foot note:

#3." "Suicide Statistics at Suicide.org". Suicide prevention, awareness, and support. Suicide.org. 2005.

We get to this page http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html, where we find the following:

U.S. Suicide Statistics (1990-2001)

Suicide Rates

Breakdown by Gender / Ethnicity

                        (Rates Per 100,000)

Group	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
Males	20.4	20.1	19.6	19.9	19.8	19.8	19.3	18.7	18.6	17.6	17.5	17.6
Females	4.8	4.7	4.6	4.6	4.5	4.4	4.4	4.4	4.4	4.1	4.1	4.1
White	13.5	13.3	13.0	13.1	12.9	12.9	12.7	12.4	12.4	11.7	11.7	11.9
Nonwhite	7.0	6.8	6.8	7.1	7.2	6.9	6.7	6.5	6.2	6.0	5.9	5.6
Black	6.9	6.7	6.8	7.0	7.0	6.7	6.5	6.2	5.7	5.6	5.6	5.3

Note the significant difference in the rates between males and females – there are about 4 male deaths by suicide for each female death by suicide. But keep in mind that there are about 3 female attempts for every male attempt.

And

U.S. Suicide Statistics (2001)

Attempted Suicides

There are approximately 750,000 suicide attempts each year.

An estimated 5 million living Americans have attempted suicide.

More females attempt suicide than males.

(3 female attempts for each male attempt.)

There are no other mention on this page of attempted suicide broken down by either male or female metrics.

Notice there is no actual data just more mentions of the factoid.

Searching for a source the best I can come up with is the following at the bottom of the same page.

Data Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

This is where the trail gets convoluted

Going to the CDC suicide page http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/index.html there are only two documents i found that deal with attempted suicide at all neither of which deal with 2001 year.

1. Suicide: At a Glance
2. New Report: Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior

The first only mentions the following:

Females are more likely than males to have had suicidal thoughts.^3

This however is referencing the second link.

This report (New Report: Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior) is rather thorough and does show females having a greater prevalence for attempting suicide, however, at no where near the rate claimed in the above factoid.

The report showed rates per 1000 in the US of 0.4 for men and 0.5 for women, a ratio of 4:5. A reported ratio not even reasonably close to a 1:3.

The only other method I could think of to find the 2001 data from the CDC was to search for the string "attempted suicide" cdc 2001 through Google. The only thing at the CDC that had to deal with attempted suicide that Google linked to was the report on china. Curiously the report itself doesn't talk about male or women and suicide attempts, what does is an editorial note.

Editorial Note: ... Similar to other countries, suicide attempts in China are more common among women than men (6)...

This is then sourced to a book:

Kerkhof AJ. Attempted suicide: patterns and trends. In: Hawton K, van Heeringen K, eds. International Handbook of Suicide and Attempted Suicide. Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons, 2000:49–64.

Unfortunately the book is behind a paywall so I personally can't at the moment look at the data. But again note that no where in this chain of evidence has any source led to data supporting a 1:3 ratio. Every new sources has been another utterance of the factoid with, at best, hard to trace sources.

From what I can find recent and well conducted research shows that men and women both attempt suicide at similar levels, with women being slightly more likely to do so.

Edit(1): spelling & grammar

Edit(2): Changed original wiki link to a link to the history of the page before this post was written as due to this post the article was changed