Suicide Rates Among Men and Women

[Helvidius]

WHO: Suicide rates

Each country listed had something in common: There was a higher rate of suicide among men than women. Most countries showed men were significantly more likely to commit suicide than women. Granted much of this data is about ten years old, why do you think there is such a disparity in gender suicides?

 

[roguenuke]

Men tend to use more aggressive suicide methods than women do. Those methods are much more likely to actually result in suicide.

For instance, women are a lot more likely to use poison or what they believe to be poison to attempt suicide. Most common suicide poisons, at least in the US and other developed nations, tend to not be quick acting poisons, so there is time to save someone who has attempted suicide by poison. Men would be much more likely to attempt suicide with a gun or other very lethal method that would be almost instantly lethal. Not much chance to save someone who has shot his/her self in the head.

Also, men are much more likely to internalize problems than women are. Not having a good outlet for stress is going to be a leading factor in suicides.

 

[soccerboy22]

Women don't have to listen to themselves bitch, men do.


/hide.


In all seriousness, and I am sure CC will correct me if he sees this and I am wrong, but at the time men were under more stress having to still fall into the main breadwinner type. That much stress can cause some people to crack.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Women attempt suicide more often, but as roguenuke said, men are more likely to use firearms or other aggressive means than women are. Thus, men *succeed* in committing suicide more often.

Why? Well, there could be a lot of reasons for that.

Let's take a specific personality disorder as an example, which is hugely dominated by women: borderline personality disorder (BPD).

People with this disorder may act out to get people to pay attention to their emotional distress, including suicide attempts.

This is basically a stunted form of communication.

Men are taught from an early age not to communicate emotional distress at all. Personality disorders can be affected by upbringing - they are different from other kinds of mental disorders, in the sense that they are not typically inborn, and usually don't appear to have a genetic link. This may be why women have BPD specifically more often than men do.

On the opposite end of that spectrum is another personality disorder which is hugely dominated by men: antisocial personality disorder, characterized by lack of empathy, and an inability for the person to feel emotions themselves. There is, admittedly, debate over whether this is a true personality disorder, but that's how it's presently classified.

Men are taught to internalize and not express their feelings. Women are typically taught to be more open. In someone with emotional distress, this may result in women taking "softer" suicide attempts as a last-ditch effort to communicate. It may also result in men not communicating at all until they absolutely want to die, and therefore taking more aggressive measures to ensure their suicide is successful.