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"It affects girls far more". Don't far more young men kill themselves? How is this being measured? Seems more complicated than that.


My understanding is that young men are successful at killing themselves far more than young women, but young women attempt to kill themselves at higher rates than young men.


Compared with suicide statistics, suicide attempts are much harder to measure (and also sort of misleading). They classify 'serious suicide attempts' (SSA) as where there is serious intent of death (SSA is the real suicide attempt, everything else is suicidal behavior or a gesture). Where suicide attempts are reported, men are more likely to commit SSA's. Not all suicide attempts are reported... and there very well may be a difference between the proportion of reported male attempts versus female attempts. Likewise the classification of the attempt is often self-reported, again the accuracy could vary according to gender. We don't know, but I would guess men are less likely to report, and less likely to commit a 'gesture'.

Mental health as well is a moderately subjective matter, and there's no doubt that the self-reported aspect of mental health problems has been highly influenced by cultural and societal changes, like how the public perception of mental illness has changed over time. Likewise I'm sure men and women think differently about this, and I'm sure the societal expectations of men/women impact it as well. When we talk about mental health getting worse over time, or impacting women more, this is inherently imprecise.

But suicide is suicide: From 1981 to 2017 the male suicide rate per 100,000 in my country (the UK) has gone from 19.5 to 17.2. The female suicide rate has gone from 10.6 to 5.4. Mostly good news: the rate has gone down.

But the gap between men and women has increased, men have gone from roughly twice as likely to kill themselves to about three times as likely as women.

It's sad that even now concern about mental health only seems to get weight when phrased in a way that makes it sound like it's impacting women more, when one of the more concrete, key statistics clearly indicates it could be the other way around (and getting worse). This observation may very well be related to the disparity at this point.




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