Suicide
Male suicide has been described as a silent epidemic: epidemic because it has a disturbingly high incidence, is much more frequent than suicide in women, and is a major contributor to men's mortality; silent because there is a low degree of public awareness of this health emergency, surprisingly little research has been done to understand it, there is little emphasis within public health on prevention of men's suicide and men themselves are reluctant to seek help for emotional suffering.
Let's look at the data on male suicide. North American men commit suicide at a rate 4-5 times that of women--the male suicide rate increases steadily from late adolescence to middle age, remaining at all ages substantially higher than the female rate. Within the field of mental health, male suicide is the primary source of premature mortality. However, there has been astonishingly little research concerning specific characteristics or risk factors for male suicide -- we really don’t know why this massive gender disparity exists. The fact that men present much lower rates of depression deepens the mystery. This gender difference has been partially attributed to the fact that men tend to use more lethal suicide means, although the reasons for this behavioural pattern have not been explained. Several other risk factors have been proposed, related to socialized masculinity traits: reluctance to acknowledge psychological distress, resistance to seeking help, reliance on alcohol use as a means to manage distress, and more rapid transition from suicidal thinking to action
So what do we do about this enormous problem? First, we need systematic research on the factors driving male suicide, types of interventions likely to be most effective at an individual level for men at high risk, and effective interventions at a population level to increase the number of men seeking help for their suffering. Second, we need health promotion interventions to increase the awareness of health care providers and the general population regarding risk factors for male suicide and to disseminate self-management skills for men to deal more effectively with psychological distress.
