Do women really attempt suicide more often?

SirSkeptic · 2014-12-22T13:48:27+00:00

My mother used to work in the suicide ward as a clinical psychologist.

She doubted the accepted stats too. She would point out that taking a mild overdose of sleeping pills as you hear your parents drive up in the car is not a bone fide attempt. It may be a cry for help, or a demand for attention, or emotional manipulation, but it's not a real suicide attempt.

She also believed that the numbers for male suicides were being underestimated. No single car accidents are counted as suicide attempts unless there's a note, but a lot of young men point their cars at trees as a means of ending it all.

lafielle · 2014-12-22T13:44:47+00:00

A suicide may fail when you try to hang yourself and the support beam of the building collapses under your weight instead.

A suicide may fail when you put a gun to your head, fire, and the bullet ricochets off your skull.

A suicide may fail when you jump off a 30 story tower and miraculously being grabbed by 12 bald eagles who carry you to safety.

In these cases, your goal was to kill yourself, and you failed. Which is unlikely, because you wanted to die, so you used a method that was reasonably certain to result in death.

Failed suicides is something that is worthwhile to track. I am quite certain it will be mostly men, because suicide failure is an unlikely event happening by chance when attempting suicide. And because it is an unlikely, random event, the male-female ratio of failed suicides should be roughly equivalent to the ratio of suicides.

A suicide pretend is taking 12 Aspirins and then calling all your friends to say goodbye, thereby alerting them to your actions so they can call 911 and get your stomach pumped.

A suicide pretend is cutting your wrists across the way and then reporting to the First Aid post when it "takes too long" and you "change your mind".

A suicide pretend is putting a knife to your throat and drawing a little bit of blood while yelling you'll kill yourself if you don't get what you want.

A person who pretends suicide is not trying to kill themselves, they are trying to manipulate others into doing their bidding by threatening something they care about. These people are on the exact same level as someone faking their own kidnapping and demanding they be paid money. They are holding themselves for ransom.

Women's lives have value. They are important. You can hold something important and valuable for ransom.

Men's lives - especially men who are down on their luck, poor and unskilled - don't have value. They are garbage. Nobody is going to pay a ransom for garbage.

Based on that, it wouldn't surprise me one bit that women are prominently amongst the suicide attempts. Except that they weren't suicide attempts. They were suicide pretends. They never intended to kill themselves. And so they didn't.

Sasha_ · 2014-12-22T12:59:09+00:00

Bollocks. For women a 'suicide attempt' is having one too-many Whiskies or taking some aspirin.

theskepticalidealist · 2014-12-22T14:35:27+00:00

Women do it for a cry for help overwhelmingly more than men do. Men end up being serious about killing themselves because they really do think it's hopeless and actually do want to die.

eletheros · 2014-12-22T12:44:28+00:00

Attempt more often? Yes, because they don't die the first time, so one suicidal woman accounts for multiple attempts.

Men are more likely to only attempt once, because they're more likely to succeed.

scdi · 2014-12-22T13:56:07+00:00

While there are reasons to question the figures, the biggest point is that dead men attempt no more suicides.

You should recognize this statistic for what it is, feminist trying to twist a men's issue to be all about the women.

Kawaii_Neko_Punk · 2014-12-22T12:45:43+00:00

I would like to know as well. The same thoughts crossed my mind as I read that thread.

wanderforever · 2014-12-22T15:19:21+00:00

Anecdotaly, I worked in psychology wards for about 6 years. Almost every suicidal patient I had was male. And what I mean is that most men had made attempts of one kind or another and survived. The suicidal women generally did not make attempts, but we're checked in for suicidal ideation. I'd say the ratio was more like 4 men too 1 woman.

Shironekosama404 · 2014-12-22T15:53:20+00:00

Yeah, I had always heard that women have more attempts, but men are more likely to succeeded on the first try. Which naturally leads into the joke that if want something done right the first time, have a man do it. But yeah as most people have stated it is likely that these attempts are more of a cry of help or attention than anything. I don't know what drives a woman to try. I know what pushed me to that moment of contemplation of suicide. I suppose it could be different for every person. I really don't know enough, so everything i typed is likely wrong and i am just talking out my ass.

Arakin · 2014-12-22T16:31:25+00:00

More women have suicide "attempts" that aren't really attempts, ie. slight od from sleeping pills, poor job cutting their wrists etc. These are largely seen as cries for help and women are more likely to express such a thing, while men, tend to wait until things get really bad and do something that finishes the job, rather than use a suicide attempt as a cry for help.

Stevemacdev · 2014-12-22T15:08:37+00:00

In Ireland sucide is much more common amongt men especially in the west. National figures here: http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/ss/suicidestatistics2011/#.VJgzu_8HYOw

ilovenotohio · 2014-12-22T17:39:37+00:00

Here's the math behind it:

Women "attempt" suicide more often than men "attempt" suicide by 300%.
Men "complete" suicide more often than women "complete" suicide by 400%.
500,000 people a year are in hospitals for "self-harm," and there's a 12:1 "success" rate (for every suicide, 12 end up in the hospital).
There are 12.5 suicides per 100,000.

So:

There are about 37,500 suicides a year in America based on those statistics.
Of those suicides, 30,000 are male. 7,500 are female.
Of the "self-harm" incidents, 375,000 are female. 125,000 are male.
If we take all "self-harm" incidents as a genuine suicide attempt (which, we know they aren't), then there are a total of 382,500 female suicide-esque attempts a year for females. There are a total of 155,000 suicide-esque attempts a year for males.
This puts men at 30% of all suicide-esque actions. This puts women at 70% of all suicide-esque actions.
Men complete at a rate of 20%. Women complete at a rate of 2%.

Adamsite · 2014-12-22T17:52:31+00:00

These statistics count one thing: non-fatal self-injuries that are reported to a hospital. This is very different than actual suicide attempts.

For example, someone may cut their wrists, panic and go to the hospital, never actually trying to die, yet it is reported as a suicide attempt.

Another may deliberately drive their car over a bridge actually die, and have it reported as accidental death.

There is an established difference between the methods that men tend to use and those that women tend to use, and much of the statistical difference can be found there.

Furthermore, men actually complete suicide several times more often than women, it is only attempts that seem to be more common in women.

2014-12-22T20:52:26+00:00

The fact that no complete count of suicide attempts are kept seriously puts the suicide attempt figures in doubt right from the get-go.

No. It completely trashes any and every conclusion drawn from them.

ArchangelleDickballs · 2014-12-23T00:37:28+00:00

Nope. Women are more likely to make suicide gestures, not attempts. A suicide gesture is a cry for help with no actual intent to die.

Women are more likely than men to use suicide as a means of communicating distress but men are more likely to actually try o end their lives.

warspite88 · 2014-12-22T17:33:57+00:00

bottom line... we live in a society that does not care much at all about boys and men killing themselves. much of that can be attributed to the misandry of feminism entrenched in our daily lives

St0n3dguru · 2014-12-22T18:19:35+00:00

"attempt", yes. Men actually succeed.

galvanised_computer · 2014-12-22T20:16:54+00:00

I don't disagree the numbers might be fudged but I do think women would have higher suicide attempt rates. Men use more violent methods and succeed more. Women do less violent methods and are more likely to live to try again.

danpilon · 2014-12-22T20:40:19+00:00

Until someone does a more difficult study and actually calculates number of people by gender who have attempted suicide at least once (completed or not completed) with an accurate definition of suicide attempt, I will go by actual death statistics, which are about as accurate as we can get right now. Defining what an "attempt" means will only add uncertainty to the statistic. Multiple failed attempts get counted, meaning 1 suicidal woman could count as 10, since men are far more likely to succeed on the first attempt. As I see it now, it is just a handy statistic for feminists to point to to claim women have it worse. For some reason the fact that way more men end up dead by suicide doesn't matter to them.

DavidByron2 · 2014-12-23T01:08:06+00:00

Yeah I came to the same conclusion some years ago. I also think male suicide is under counted (and "road accidents while drunk" over counted).

DeaD_bAU5 · 2014-12-22T18:38:21+00:00

If you consider scratching their arm with a safety pin or taking 5 more Tylenol than they should a legitimate "attempt"

Title	Do women really attempt suicide more often?
Author	atheist4thecause
Upvotes	45
Comments	81
Date	December 22, 2014 12:13 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2q2a9p/do_women_really_attempt_suicide_more_often/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/do-women-really-attempt-suicide-more-often.991831 https://theredarchive.com/post/991831

Comments