What can we do about the high male suicide rate?

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This is a rather mean and cruel thing to say, Fnord. You can't possibly know what was going on in the minds of the men that Yigeren has known, you weren't there so it's not right for you to speak for them and blame her for them not speaking up about their feelings. Did you not see that she's known someone who committed suicide; do you have no compassion at all? Sometimes you are just mean to people and it's not cool. I think you should apologise for being so unnecessarily harsh.

Give it up, Wilbur. It is neither mean nor cruel to suggest that the reason no one wants to discuss their feelings with someone might be because that someone gives off the wrong "vibes". She has already claimed that men don't understand their own feelings - I'm just pointing out the wrongness of this claim and why it is wrong.

As for knowing someone who has committed suicide, who doesn't? A former co-worker of mine committed suicide last year, and a relative committed "suicide by cop" before that. No one seems concerned about how I feel about these people's deaths ... but maybe that's because I'm just a man.

Fnord, I think you're engaging in projection here. However hurtful and upsetting your experience, it is unreasonable and unfair to assert such things were the case with others.

Unless the society we live in and how it's structured is radically changed, nothing can be done besides making more effective support systems. Nothing is written in stone, but some people just don't make it.

Well if we use analytical skills there are ways of extracting starting points. You can start by brain storming possible factors or further questions based on what these figure actually mean in practice:

e.g.


1. What are the fluctuation across those 35 years and how do they correspond to socioeconomic factors or anything else?
2. Get more specific demography and geographical information. Where they are, what they do, income, ethnicity, etc.
3. Why has women's suicides halved and men's not? I'm not aware of a discriminatory policy, but perhaps there is an unintentional bias. How can we look at how we deliver services across the sexes?
4. How many killed themselves with no previous attempts and how many had one or more attempts before?
5. Can we say that 3rd generation drugs have any impact? Well for the figure alone we can't say that anything has, but maybe the figures would have been higher or lower.
6. What are the most common situational/social factors reported, either from first hand or second information? Do they have common characteristic(s) for men and for women.
7. Is it really true that men have a harder time talking about their feelings or even processing them?
8. What is being done to reach out to men?
9. How many men ask services, get them, follow through with the appointments, etc?
10. How many men have made attempts, or have been close but are now recovered? What was the important factor in their recovery?
11. Same question for women?
12. What is the impact on hormones on mood in males?
13. What is the performance of various types of therapy on men?
14. What is the nature of mood as you grow older?

That is just a small number I have come up with off the top of my head, which could be used to set up experiments or surveys. If we get some answers, we can then look at how some of these answers relate to one another.

I think that in general suicide is a result of someone feeling completely hopeless about their situation and simply lacking the willpower to continue living a meaningless existence.

I believe that general nihilism is a big part of this, that some people, especially those without spouses and children, feel that they have nothing to live for, that their existence doesn't really mean anything. Enter the cut-throat world of capitalism, and it is easy (for me at least) to understand how some people simply can't be bothered to spend their whole lives working to survive, when they really have no strong will to survive in the first place. This is definitely the case for me. Google the lyrics for the Simon and Garfunkel song 'A Most Peculiar Man' (or a few Nietzsche quotes) and you'll get a better idea of what I'm going on about, this song has always been a bit scary to me as these lyrics also describe the typical autism traits perfectly.

Of course this is all general and not specific to men, which leads me to think the way boys are raised is definitely a part of this. I was a very feminine boy, if that makes sense. I used to play with dolls instead of sports, watch TV shows aimed at girls, I like long hair, etc. (I have often wondered whether, if I had been born now, when queerness is more recognised and accepted, I would have identified as trans). I was also very over-emotional, I would burst out crying at the smallest provocation. I was always heavily criticised and mocked for this, never by my parents, but by my teachers and fellow schoolkids.

My theory is that men are aware of their feelings, but try their best to ignore them and pretend they don't exist, partly because they have been conditioned to do so, but also because they fear them. Through my own experiences with depression I have learned that it is dangerous to listen to my own thoughts, and even when I am not depressed I feel uneasy when I am alone with my thoughts, when I am in bed trying to fall asleep I have to have an audiobook on to keep my mind occupied, otherwise I will just ruminate and will end up feeling horrible.

As far as what can be done about this situation, I actually believe that traditional psychological therapy is not the answer. Pressuring men to discuss things they are not comfortable talking about (like their feelings) with a complete stranger is not going to help them, I remember actually feeling worse after these kinds of therapy sessions. There's a reason why men are less inclined to seek help in the traditional sense. I think to stop suicide, men need to be given a reason to live (which from memory, no therapist was able to provide). When I was depressed and talking about how I simply couldn't be bothered living anymore and had no reason to live, my Mum got desperate and pleaded with me saying 'do it for me' (which worked, seeing as I'm still here a few years later). Men need to be given opportunities to follow their passions, have a social life, find love, etc. To fix the problem of male suicide, I think you need to go straight to the root cause of the depression and fix it to simply make the man's life more bearable. This in turn allows men to sort themselves out rather easily, in my experience.

These are all great point and I totally get that the situational can make an impact.

Thing is there are those that don't really fit into that. Or at least not on the surface. They have the job, the wife and kids (I don't want a wife an kids but you get the idea). There is no real indication at all, and then they kill themselves.

Now maybe you can say in that case they are not talking about their feelings. However what time frame are we talking about? We don't know know their mood is much of the time. How much time they had to discuss it.

How much of the desperation come from situational factors, and how much of it come from their brain chemistry? How much of the situation is driven by external factors or their mental state.

Obviously there are many where a large change in situation might trigger a deep depression. However I'm not talking about such people ATM, I'm talking about people whoa re naturally volatile.

However there is an argument that the volatility is remnant from an earlier period or childhood. I think that can happen too. However you also get sibling that grew up under especially the same conditions. Then one of them develops severe bouts of depression.

I don't know if it's true that suicide for women is a 'cry for help' and for men it's a last option, but if that's so then we need to make men comfortable asking for help.
Here in the US, at least, there's this libertarian ideal of the 'independent man' who doesn't need no stinkin' government, and apparently doesn't need no stinkin' culture or social support either; holding that up as an expectation is not only unrealistic (I don't think any non-hermit person exists who doesn't cooperate with others in at least some fashion), but possibly dangerous as well. Humans are humans, and humans sometimes need help from other humans.

I agree, and I'm one of those hyper-independent types. I'm not unhappy though.

However the UK doesn't really have the same level of survivalist libertarians or "natural law" nuts so I'm not how much that factors.

chances are good that even you will need help sometime, and you won't be any less of a man when it happens.

A man has to trust the person he's pouring his heart out to. Otherwise, every inquiry into his welfare is likely to be met with "I'm okay", or a noncommittal grunt.

(It's like when a man asks a woman how she is, and her only answer is an emphatic "Fine!")

If you want a man to pour his heart out to you, he must first believe that he can trust you with its contents. Responding to a man's claim that he feels hopelessness by telling him that it's his own fault will shatter his trust in the woman who says it.

Hey, I'm a man. I work with men, and many men work for me. I know what men are like!

Been there. It was actually difficult to get what I wanted, but that is a different specific story a bit different from this subject.

However I did things, made changes that eventually made me happier. Part of that was talk therapy, CBT, neurofeedback, diet, exercise, etc.

I'm hyper-independent as a personality. I'm not against asking for help. I just like being independent if I can, it makes me happy.

Most people who call themselves independent are still dependent on people through delegation or otherwise. To me this is something other than Independence.

Why do anything?

So people have a higher standard of life are happier, etc.

Are you equating suicide to self-euthanasia? I'm pro-euthanasia.

Yeah, you are totally wrong on this point. I happen to know this one person very, very well. He puts on a front to everyone and represses and ignores his own feelings. He was like this long before I knew him. Has absolutely no idea half the time why he's upset or what he's feeling.

You really know nothing about me and are being extremely judgmental. My typical method of working things out with another person is actually a very logical approach. If the other person isn't willing to offer his own opinion, feelings, and reasoning, there is absolutely nothing to work with to solve the problem. I'm a problem-solving goal-orientated type of person, not a man-hating, guilt-tripping, whiny stereotype.

Maybe if you took the time to get to know me, you would know what kind of person I am and judge me for myself, not what your idea of women in general is.

Don't fall out folks.

Personal experiences are valid interpretations of those individuals. People have different experiences.