Men and Suicide
If you were to read articles almost anywhere about the rates of suicide and the trends, groups, and overall demographics of suicide, you would have a hard time finding the most drastic gap in all demographic categories. They’ll likely tell you that the elderly are at great risk for suicide. They will tell you that people with disabilities are at great risk. You would easily find statistics on veterans’ suicide rates, LGBT youth suicide rates, and specific occupations that have much higher rates of suicide than others. They will even tell you that there is an epidemic of teen girls’ mental decline on the rise primarily because of electronic devices and social media, in particular. These are all valid and necessary concerns. This is not meant to take away from those groups. Only to point out what they won’t say.
Here's what they won’t tell you. They won’t tell you that the largest risk factor for suicide in America is being male. They won’t tell you that the difference in suicide rates between males and females are still drastically different. They will tell you that females attempt suicide more, but they won’t tell you that males are far more likely to succeed in the attempt. This is primarily due to the methods chosen. Females are likely to self-harm with cutting or overdosing on pills. While males will hang themselves or use a firearm. In 2022, the suicide rate among males was 4 times higher than females. Male suicides account for the same number of deaths as breast cancer. There is not another greater disparity in America between any two groups than that of males and females. In 2021, per the CDC report, the rates of suicide per 100,000 were 22.8% for males in contrast to 5.7% for females. This was up from 17.7% in males (producing a 5.1% increase from the year 2000) and 4.0% in females (producing an increase of 1.7% in females from the year 2000). Just that statistic alone shows us where the greater problem exists. The display of a 1.7% increase in suicides versus a 5.1% rate increase is a no-brainer. Those numbers increased again for 2022. The rates of suicide in 2022 were 23.0 for males and 5.9 for females. It’s not just males in general, but more specifically males between the ages of 15 and 34 that are experiencing the greatest increase in suicides. Until 2010, middle aged men led the way in male suicide rates. After 2010, it shifted to young men aged 15-34.
So where is this coming from? Why an increase in overall suicide and the huge disparity between males and females? There are so many factors that go into this topic. I will primarily only address philosophical, physiological, and psychological issues, while understanding that there are genetic, sociological, geographical, and intellectual reasons as well.
Men are currently being attacked from various directions. The idea of a strong, capable man that can protect a woman and provide for a woman is considered very antiquated in our current society. Of course, this stems from the spousal abuse that took place in the 1950’s that bled into the revolt and subsequent sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Women had had enough. And rightfully so. The problem is that they forced men to reside on the far other side of the masculine/feminine scale. If you even resemble a masculine trait, you are deemed a threat to society.
Pendulum swinging has never worked for any entity, at any time in history, for anyone that has ever lived, ever. Going from one extreme to the opposite is never a good strategy for producing a better outcome than what you are currently experiencing. It will always produce, at the very least, the same outcome, and often, a far worse outcome. So telling men that they can’t be masculine at all and asking them to become feminine, spineless, weak individuals, creates a dark pattern that men were never designed to dwell in.
What is happening is a downward spiral of events. We have a lowering of testosterone in men when they get married. There is another lowering of testosterone when they know they are having children. And if their wife is on the birth control pill, the woman’s desire is for a less masculine man because of the synthetic hormone that tells the woman’s body that she may be pregnant. Therefore, she desires a less masculine man. So men are being asked again, to lower the level of testosterone. Often, when testosterone is too low in a man, estrogen sees more opportunity to be present and gets released and brings about some significant cognitive dissonance. All of the sudden, men are crying more than they ever have. They are getting moody quicker. They are unexplainably gaining weight with no change in diet or exercise.
When a man becomes useless to society for what he was designed to do, produce and protect, it sends him to a place of confusion. What happens next is the scariest of all. He is still wired to be bigger than his circumstance. He is wired to believe that he has it all together and it’s just a phase or a small thought pattern that will go away. He believes that real men don’t ask for help. As a result, while he is experiencing these wild thoughts of sadness, emotional dysregulation, mood swings, feeling useless and unwanted, he believes it will just go away, but it doesn’t. Right about here is where the man isolates. Once he isolates, he becomes open season for the enemy.
I have often said that isolation is the number one tool of the enemy. If he can get you alone or feeling like you are the only person going through what you’re going through, he can tell you lie after lie and you’ll believe them. Isolation comes in various forms. You don’t reach out to anyone- is the most common form. When someone reaches out to see how you are, your response is, “I’m good. Everything is fine. How about you?” When you know good and well everything is anything but fine.
So what is the solution? I’m glad you asked. I can’t sit here and promise to know the total solution to this crisis. What I can tell you is that there needs to be a balance between the rugged smart mouth abuser of the 1950’s and the spineless, useless, wimp of the 2020’s. The best place to start with finding the balance is to become emotionally intelligent. Emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and understand the wide range of emotions you can experience. Men often think there are only two emotions, happy and pissed off. It is so much more than that. Men feel lonely. Men feel anxious. Men fear. Men get elated. Men worry. Men get stressed. Men feel empathy. Men love and want to be loved. NONE of this is weak. It just exists irrespective of our current state of manhood. Understanding it, recognizing it, and managing it makes us a more effective warrior, king, lover, and friend; the four types of men that Authentic Manhood says we should be. This balance brings us to a place that we can be gentle in our approach, slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen, sense that we are experiencing an emotion that we many need help regulating, reaching out to the appropriate person to do just that, and still being the strong protector and producer our wives and children need in times of crisis and even in times of day to day stabilized maintenance of household negotiations.
DO NOT be above reaching out. Also DO NOT be so weak that you’re no good to anyone. Strike the balance. We are a community of people. Not every man for himself. Get in. Your life depends on it.
Stay Classy GP!
Grainger