A focus on prevention is standard for every disease, but somehow for male suicide all we hear are idioms like: "Check in on your brothers" or "Talk to someone when you feel bad". These are platitudes that have no practical effect, because they just attempt to mask the symptoms, and they do absolutely nothing about the root cause of the problem. Look, I'll be blunt here: You can't just make someone want to live again. All of these supposed "solutions" circulating in the media and elsewhere share one fundamental flaw: they assume that a man is already suicidal, and by that point it's often already too late.

So what would a campaign of suicide prevention in men look like? Well, based on the risk factors for men that lead to poor mental health, here's a brief overview:

  • specific programs and funding to help men find good careers and to provide training and job opportunities for unemployed and underemployed men
  • a family court system that supports 50/50 shared parenthood by default, and that seeks to reconnect and reintegrate estranged fathers into the lives of their children, so that they want to support them financially, rather than using jail and legal threats to create an unhealthy adversarial relationship between men and their families
  • a justice system that prioritized rehabilitation and attempted to limit the number of men it fed into its uncaring machinery (instead of creating ever more laws, that in practice – or in their writing! – only target men)
  • properly funded mental health services that are created by men and made specifically for men, and that recognize the often invisible and silent ways men use to heal from pain
  • explore synergies with the addiction epidemic that is occurring for men (Note: drug addiction is often described as a "disease of despair", and finding ways to prevent the onset of substance abuse will have strong overlap with stopping a man from even having suicidal thoughts in the first place)
  • serious legal penalties for the teachers who sexually abuse young boys in schools, and who currently get away with it

These are simple preventions based on the highest risk factors for male suicide (which are unemployment, financial problems, legal troubles, childhood sexual abuse, depression, and addiction).

Seriously, what society is doing right now around male suicide would be like learning that asbestos is harmful to the lungs of the men who were forced to work in the mines and buildings containing it, and instead of banning or extremely limiting the use of that hazardous material the world just advised men: "Well, tell someone when you start feeling sick, umkay?".