Modern men and suicide.

(Mitch’s note) The original version of this article was published a little over a three years ago on a magazine site that has since been shut down. I was new to submitting my thoughts to the teh webz at the time but it went viral. My life hasn’t been the same since. I’ve made a concerted effort to distance myself from those old articles but I’m finding that I can’t NOT say something about what is all around us but is never reported. I’ve edited the article slightly for relevancy for even only three years later, not much has changed. As a matter of fact, I see an epidemic coming of men committing suicide for reasons that anyone with eyes can see.

I’ve seen a lot on the news lately about how men, especially returning Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans are committing suicide in record numbers. Veterans of those two conflicts are committing suicide at the rate of one per day on average. And it seems it’s not isolated, the numbers are way up in every non-third world country. Since I’ve never had any desire to self-inflict the celestial dirt nap myself, I figured I would do some digging and see what was up.

It didn’t take long, I found this sentence in an article posted on PR Newswire and it set me to wondering:

“Between the ages of 20 and 29 suicide is three times as common in men as in women and the number of attempted suicides amongst young men has doubled in 10 years across most developed countries.”

We don’t hear much about men who attempt or commit suicide from any of our media outlets. Even the majority of the information on the internet is surprisingly repetitive, superfluous and condescending. The statistic quoted above that suicide among young men has doubled in the past ten years is troubling to say the least. There are however, a few sources that have some good (maybe I should have said bad) information about the subject.

From Jerry Kennard, former About.com Guide:

“In countries like the USA and the UK there has been a steady increase in the numbers of men who elect to end their own lives prematurely. On average in the USA one person (male and female) takes their own life every 18 minutes. Of those who attempt suicide the completion rate for men is four times higher than for women. Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men according to National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Young men and older men are particularly vulnerable groups. The suicide rate peaks in men between the ages of 20-24, which if isolated from the general statistics on suicide, places suicide as the 3rd ranking cause of death. (Emphasis mine) Older people suffer from the loss of loved ones and friends and can feel isolated, ignored, valueless, or overly dependent on others. In the USA, the leading method of suicide is by firearms whereas in the UK where guns are illegal, exhaust fumes, hanging and overdoses are most commonly employed”.

The third ranking cause of death in the 20-24 year old age group? Good grief, this is when an individual is supposed to be having the most fun in his life. This should be a man’s college years or at least when he sets out on his own to make his way in the world. What is causing this phenomenon of young men killing themselves? I looked some more and found this article from Dr Ciaran Mulholland, MRC clinical scientist, senior lecturer and honorary consultant psychiatrist writing for NetDoctor:

“A worrying recent trend is the increasing rate of suicide among younger men (a trend not seen among young women). The majority of these men have not asked for help before their deaths.

The reasons why the number of men taking their own lives has risen in recent years are far from clear. All of the proposed explanations share a common feature –the changing role of men in society (Emphasis mine).

• Adolescence has been prolonged, with adulthood and independence reached at a much later age than previously. Two generations ago, work began at the age of 14; one generation ago at 16 years for most; now many men only achieve financial independence in their mid to late 20s.
• Men have a more stressful time in achieving educational goals than in the past and are now less successful in this regard than women.
• Work is much less secure now and periods of unemployment are the norm for many (psychologically the threat of unemployment is at least as harmful as unemployment itself).
• Alcohol use, and abuse, has increased markedly since the Second World War. Such use is often an attempt to cope with stress and to self-medicate symptoms.
• Illegal drug abuse has become much more common (a correlation between the youth suicide rate and the rate of convictions for drug offences has been demonstrated in some countries).
• Changes that are assumed to be symptoms of the ‘breakdown of society’ are associated with a rising suicide rate (examples include the rising divorce rate and falling church attendances).”

Did you notice in that excerpt that the suicide rate among young women is not rising? Notice also that Dr. Mulholland stated that all the factors listed above have one common denominator – the changing role of men in society. I have a different take; I say it’s the marginalization of men’s role in society. The educational system is completely skewed towards females, many professions are now being taken over by women because of affirmative action, sexual harassment laws make it intolerable for a normal man to work in a profession that also employs women and layoffs and long stretches of unemployment are now the norm. It’s no wonder that many men turn to alcohol and drugs to ease the stress such unbearable conditions impose upon men.

But it turns out it’s not just young men. From “Divorce Doubles Suicide Risk in Men”by Michelle Beaulieu writing for Menstuff.

“In addition, divorce or marital separation more than doubled the risk of suicide in men, whereas in women, marital status was unrelated to suicide. (Emphasis mine) Kposowa suspects that this difference is related to the social networks men and women form outside their marriages, which may be stronger or more meaningful in women than in men. ‘Women have better ways of communicating,’ Kposowa told Reuters Health in an interview. ‘They may have more social support networks, friends and relatives that they talk to, whereas men don’t have social support networks.”

So, a woman’s marital status is immaterial to her propensity to commit suicide? And what’s all that crap about “social support networks?” The truth is, generally it’s the woman initiating the divorce and she probably couldn’t be happier about it. Whereas the man is generally much more emotionally invested in the marriage and the family and becomes devastated when the divorce happens.

It’s actually worse than the previous paragraph states. From Katie Drummond writing for AOL News:

“Dr. Justin Denney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, is studying the relationship between family structure and suicide rates. He’s using national data collected on over 1 million people, and their households, to pinpoint how family dynamics can precipitate, or protect against, suicide mortality.

Denney’s research is the first to examine so many cases at a national level, but experts have been aware of the link between divorce and men’s suicide risk for decades. According to a compilation of research published by J. Rank and confirmed by Denney, suicide rates are higher among divorced men, and lowest among those still married. Single men fall somewhere in between.

Denney’s research, published last year in Social Science Quarterly, concluded that men who are divorced are 39 percent more likely to commit suicide than those still married. The difference increases to 50 percent when a man is a widow. Among women, differences in suicide risk among those who were married, divorced or widowed were statistically insignificant .”  (Emphasis mine)

Another study that shows that men suffer much more than women when marriages break up. And another that shows that women don’t give a shit. It was kind of surprising to see that widowers have it worse, but I think that they suffer more because they weren’t left, the one they loved died.

Finally from James Walsh writing for Articles Base:

“Men tend to feel more shattered than women after the divorce because in most of the divorce cases involving children, the custody of the children is awarded to the mother. Therefore, all of a sudden, men find themselves to be a mere visitor in their child’s life, which can be a very tough emotion to deal with.

Children tend to act as stress busters during the divorce process because they become a source of love and support after divorce. While custodial mothers are able to reap the rewards of this love and affection and cope with divorce easily, non-custodial fathers tend to feel very lonely because they not only lose their status of being a husband but also of being a father.

It is common for men to blame themselves after the divorce because they feel that divorce could have been averted if they had been more sensitive to their troubled marriage. Truth is, no matter how much a wife complains about problems or concerns in a marriage, husbands mostly never understand the importance of these issues. For that reason, when wives file for a divorce, most husbands are in state of shock. When men are unable to deal with their feelings of guilt, bitterness, loneliness, and anger, suicide seems to be the only alternative.” (Emphasis mine)

Where else can a man who is hard working, faithful to his wife, non-abusive and a good father to his kids, while sitting in his living room in the house he’s paying for, have the cops knock on his door, forcibly remove him from his own home, subject him to the woman-centered justice system, take a majority of his income, isolate him from his children, evict him from said home when all the while, he never saw it coming. Only here in the west. No wonder men feel shattered.

This trend isn’t isolated to the United States. From Bob Ellis writing for ABC News in Australia.

“Young and mid-aged males are most of those who suicide, during high school exams, failed love affairs, unemployment, retrenchment, divorce, bankruptcy, small business ventures going bust.

Five Australian men suicide each day and only one woman. Why is this so?

Well, men have images of themselves, as conqueror, provider, breadwinner, football star, self-made billionaire, chick magnet, local hero, which, if they fail at, darken their mood. There are so many things they can fail at, so many contests they are in, so many medals they will not win, so many promises to keep, that the gun in the drawer comes to mind pretty frequently, or its equivalent.

How many deaths by car crash are witting acts of suicide by mid-aged males, self-slaughter? We will never know.

The American concept “loser” has a lot to do with it.” (Emphasis mine)

And most of the time that feeling of being a “loser” has to do with a man’s interactions with women. Either his inability to attract one, keep one or find one to have sex with. Even if the man is married, a stretch of unemployment will strain his relationship with his wife sometimes to the breaking point. At the extreme, the feeling of being a loser can manifest itself with paroxysms of violence and mass murder.

The statement made by his second to last sentence, “How many deaths by car crash are witting acts of suicide by mid-aged males, self-slaughter?” gave me pause to think about it. So I did some research. The only study I could find about auto fatalities that actually differentiated between men and women is from 2006. I don’t think much has changed – here’s the article from CarAccidents.com:

“Men are more than twice as likely to die in a car crash than women, consider the yearly statistics shown below. In fact, studies have shown as many as 73 percent of all people killed in car accidents are male. Since record keeping began: male fatalities significantly outweigh female fatalities. However men and women do not drive the same number of miles under the same conditions- men do about 60-65% more driving than women. Studies show that woman take shorter trips and female drivers have a greater number of minor crashes than do men. However men are still 70% more likely to be in a serious crash.”

Car Crash Stats:

What accounts for this disparity?

Some researchers believe the explanation is to be found in hormones related to aggressiveness; others put more emphasis on data such as the measurably greater alcohol use among men while driving.

Men die in car crashes at a rate more than double that for women. I don’t think male aggressiveness or the use of alcohol can explain away that statistic. It appears that Mr. Ellis may have made the correct assumption. What I think is men kill themselves in car crashes to avoid the pain and stigma of a suicide to their families and relatives. Also, the life insurance company will pay death benefits for a car crash victim when generally they won’t for a suicide. How many other types of accidents are really just men checking out from this life? I think if we knew that, we would all be shocked.

I have to say that this is one of the more depressing articles I’ve ever written and when it was published, I still had a false hope that things would get better. Well, over a year later, things have gotten worse and I’m a hell of a lot less naïve than I was when I wrote that article.

I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.