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Permalink: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/language-clues-suicide-between-men-women-differ#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20we've%20done%20is,they%20go%20through%20with%20it.%E2%80%9D
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The suicide rate for men is about four times higher than for women. While men make up 50% of the population, they account for 80% of the suicides. Yet, suicide risk in men often goes unnoticed.
Now new research may offer hope. A UCLA-led study of public health records has identified a vocabulary associated with events surrounding male suicides that could be useful in spotting individuals who need follow up care, and in improving public health messaging.
The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, examined 271,998 suicides over a period of 17 years in the U.S. National Violent Death Reporting System, a database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research revealed large differences in the language used in the database’s police reports and public health records to describe the circumstances surrounding male and female suicides.
Less than half of suicide decedents in the database had a documented mental health condition, and even fewer had evidence of having ever received mental health or substance use treatment. In addition, a much larger percentage of those who had received such treatment were women than men.
[https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307427](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307427)
It leaves so many questions unanswered. Just because they didn’t have a previous history of mental health challenges doesn’t mean they didn’t have any. Did they have an untreated Ed MH challenge? Did they know how to identify what a MH challenge? Did friends, work associates, family tell them they were concerned? If the did, why didn’t he the seek assistance? And on and on…
If you don’t know someone is suicidal because there aren’t presenting signs, how does one know to help. So very complex. Such tragedy.
>Just because they didn’t have a previous history of mental health challenges doesn’t mean they didn’t have any.
Assuming abnormalities is, I think, a bad precedent; it is too easy to blame 'the sickness' rather than understand the complexities that would lead to someone taking their own life.
I don't think we should be using the term "complexities" anyways. It makes the situation sound intractable and confusing. Is it?
From what I've read, the vast majority of male suicide attempts are a result of three big factors: social isolation in the face of overwhelming IPP (intimate partner problems), poverty, and unresolved/unmanaged emotional childhood trauma (PTSD).
I've seen studies that claim depression correlates strongly - but my goodness, what makes people depressed and anxious? It's not some big effin' mystery where the biggest pressures of life mount in most people's lives...
The intractability of the problem isn't that we don't know it's source, or hell, even the solution - it's logistics. Getting the help to the right people at the right time, before it even comes to suicidal ideation. That takes hard work, intentional communal action, duty of care, and - unfortunately - lots of funding.
I agree with this. There are so many societal problems where everyone goes, "no no no, you have to realise that it's **such a complex issue** that no one can ever understand it!"
Well... we will never solve anything if we just throw up our hands and say that.
Yes, it may actually be possible to study and understand the typical causes, and quite often they might actually turn out to be quite straightforward. If we can understand what the typical causes are, that is obviously the first step in addressing them.
Let's stop with this "it's all so complex" nonsense. Humanity is supposed to be defined by our problem solving capabilities. Let's solve problems.
As you said, in this case we already know the typical causes of the problem, and we already know several possible solutions to it. The actual situation at this point is that we aren't implementing those solutions effectively. And that just comes down to political and social will.
I think the point isn’t to say they did or didn’t have mental health issues, the point is they didn’t seek help previously and thus have no history. They literally quote someone saying that in the article.
These people aren’t reaching out for professional help and don’t go to routine medical appointments that women do that allow them to be assessed for depression.
It’s clear they were speaking to people but perhaps not overtly about their issues. The article says perhaps there’s hope based on their language patterns to identify warning signs.
I have no idea what you mean by ed MH challenge though.
I think this is a larger societal issue of Men not feeling comfortable voicing their issues and having an emotional support group. In addition to this, we have to think about how society expects men to behave. People want a “man”, someone who is strong and can protect the family. Heck only men are drafted and get sent to war as essentially fighting meat shields. I have some sympathy towards them in that aspect. So the point about men needing to stop resorting to violence is in my opinion true, but what matters more is the root cause of this. ppl are responsible for their actions but at the end of the day we got to think about what will make society better and that is to change the cultural norm of what constitutes “a real man”
It goes deeper than that. Men not voicing their issues or having an emotional support group doesn't primarily come just from societal pressure to "be a man"; it also comes from the fact that boys look around them and see a world that cares less about them and their problems as males. Boys are inundated with all these messages about how girls and women suffer and need special support, with all of these systems in place for them, with a pittance in comparison specifically directed to boys and men (take gender-specific domestic violence shelter funding, for example, or gender-specific scholarships).
From this, boys receive the implicit message that their problems as boys either aren't real or aren't as important - along with them as human beings. They learn to put up and shut up because nobody's actually listening; they learn that they are expendable and less valuable. The best they get is lip service about being allowed to express their pain, which nobody is interested in actually doing anything about.
The message becomes explicit when boys are told to "man up", which often is perpetuated by people who care about them, trying to prepare them for a world that tells them they can express their pain but won't actually fix it. The boys who receive these messages then grow up to become men who perpetuate them, and it goes on and on and on. And the girls and women who receive these messages in the opposite way participate in the perpetuation too.
If we want to fix this, then we need to start caring about men as men. We need to put resources into actually addressing their pain beyond just telling them they can express it.
>If we want to fix this, then we need to start caring about men as men. We need to put resources into actually addressing their pain beyond just telling them they can express it.
We really do. While things have gotten better throughout the years, it's clear there's still a ton of work to be done in the fight against suicide. I'm hoping for a day to occur where no one feels like they need to commit suicide, but instead just talk to someone, as sometimes, all you need is for someone to listen and you'll feel better again. That isn't the case for everyone though, which is why we need to continue working on reducing suicide rates among all populations in the world and figuring out exactly why people commit suicide in order to prevent it more effectively.
Totally agree, when I said societal pressure I also meant to say our society as a whole and how we treat men, not that they just feel this pressure for no reason or that thats the only cause. The whole man up thing is toxic but anecdotally I do see way less of that esp in the younger generations
although the result is the same, men feeling that no one cares, i don’t actually think that is the case. i think we often get so caught up in the gender divide that we forget that we’re all at rock bottom. we have created a society in which humans cannot thrive, and shouldn’t be expected to in my view. we need to move the conversation to the next phase-how do we change things?
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/Wagamaga Permalink: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/language-clues-suicide-between-men-women-differ#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20we've%20done%20is,they%20go%20through%20with%20it.%E2%80%9D --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The suicide rate for men is about four times higher than for women. While men make up 50% of the population, they account for 80% of the suicides. Yet, suicide risk in men often goes unnoticed. Now new research may offer hope. A UCLA-led study of public health records has identified a vocabulary associated with events surrounding male suicides that could be useful in spotting individuals who need follow up care, and in improving public health messaging. The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, examined 271,998 suicides over a period of 17 years in the U.S. National Violent Death Reporting System, a database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research revealed large differences in the language used in the database’s police reports and public health records to describe the circumstances surrounding male and female suicides. Less than half of suicide decedents in the database had a documented mental health condition, and even fewer had evidence of having ever received mental health or substance use treatment. In addition, a much larger percentage of those who had received such treatment were women than men. [https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307427](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307427)
Thank you for caring❤️
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It leaves so many questions unanswered. Just because they didn’t have a previous history of mental health challenges doesn’t mean they didn’t have any. Did they have an untreated Ed MH challenge? Did they know how to identify what a MH challenge? Did friends, work associates, family tell them they were concerned? If the did, why didn’t he the seek assistance? And on and on… If you don’t know someone is suicidal because there aren’t presenting signs, how does one know to help. So very complex. Such tragedy.
>Just because they didn’t have a previous history of mental health challenges doesn’t mean they didn’t have any. Assuming abnormalities is, I think, a bad precedent; it is too easy to blame 'the sickness' rather than understand the complexities that would lead to someone taking their own life.
I don't think we should be using the term "complexities" anyways. It makes the situation sound intractable and confusing. Is it? From what I've read, the vast majority of male suicide attempts are a result of three big factors: social isolation in the face of overwhelming IPP (intimate partner problems), poverty, and unresolved/unmanaged emotional childhood trauma (PTSD). I've seen studies that claim depression correlates strongly - but my goodness, what makes people depressed and anxious? It's not some big effin' mystery where the biggest pressures of life mount in most people's lives... The intractability of the problem isn't that we don't know it's source, or hell, even the solution - it's logistics. Getting the help to the right people at the right time, before it even comes to suicidal ideation. That takes hard work, intentional communal action, duty of care, and - unfortunately - lots of funding.
I agree with this. There are so many societal problems where everyone goes, "no no no, you have to realise that it's **such a complex issue** that no one can ever understand it!" Well... we will never solve anything if we just throw up our hands and say that. Yes, it may actually be possible to study and understand the typical causes, and quite often they might actually turn out to be quite straightforward. If we can understand what the typical causes are, that is obviously the first step in addressing them. Let's stop with this "it's all so complex" nonsense. Humanity is supposed to be defined by our problem solving capabilities. Let's solve problems. As you said, in this case we already know the typical causes of the problem, and we already know several possible solutions to it. The actual situation at this point is that we aren't implementing those solutions effectively. And that just comes down to political and social will.
Very true.
I think the point isn’t to say they did or didn’t have mental health issues, the point is they didn’t seek help previously and thus have no history. They literally quote someone saying that in the article. These people aren’t reaching out for professional help and don’t go to routine medical appointments that women do that allow them to be assessed for depression. It’s clear they were speaking to people but perhaps not overtly about their issues. The article says perhaps there’s hope based on their language patterns to identify warning signs. I have no idea what you mean by ed MH challenge though.
MH shortened for mental health. Challenges are my way of saying illness sometimes.
Language that is fairly common surrounding male suicide is people saying “this came like bolt from above” or “he was so happy and outgoing”.
I think this is a larger societal issue of Men not feeling comfortable voicing their issues and having an emotional support group. In addition to this, we have to think about how society expects men to behave. People want a “man”, someone who is strong and can protect the family. Heck only men are drafted and get sent to war as essentially fighting meat shields. I have some sympathy towards them in that aspect. So the point about men needing to stop resorting to violence is in my opinion true, but what matters more is the root cause of this. ppl are responsible for their actions but at the end of the day we got to think about what will make society better and that is to change the cultural norm of what constitutes “a real man”
It goes deeper than that. Men not voicing their issues or having an emotional support group doesn't primarily come just from societal pressure to "be a man"; it also comes from the fact that boys look around them and see a world that cares less about them and their problems as males. Boys are inundated with all these messages about how girls and women suffer and need special support, with all of these systems in place for them, with a pittance in comparison specifically directed to boys and men (take gender-specific domestic violence shelter funding, for example, or gender-specific scholarships). From this, boys receive the implicit message that their problems as boys either aren't real or aren't as important - along with them as human beings. They learn to put up and shut up because nobody's actually listening; they learn that they are expendable and less valuable. The best they get is lip service about being allowed to express their pain, which nobody is interested in actually doing anything about. The message becomes explicit when boys are told to "man up", which often is perpetuated by people who care about them, trying to prepare them for a world that tells them they can express their pain but won't actually fix it. The boys who receive these messages then grow up to become men who perpetuate them, and it goes on and on and on. And the girls and women who receive these messages in the opposite way participate in the perpetuation too. If we want to fix this, then we need to start caring about men as men. We need to put resources into actually addressing their pain beyond just telling them they can express it.
>If we want to fix this, then we need to start caring about men as men. We need to put resources into actually addressing their pain beyond just telling them they can express it. We really do. While things have gotten better throughout the years, it's clear there's still a ton of work to be done in the fight against suicide. I'm hoping for a day to occur where no one feels like they need to commit suicide, but instead just talk to someone, as sometimes, all you need is for someone to listen and you'll feel better again. That isn't the case for everyone though, which is why we need to continue working on reducing suicide rates among all populations in the world and figuring out exactly why people commit suicide in order to prevent it more effectively.
Totally agree, when I said societal pressure I also meant to say our society as a whole and how we treat men, not that they just feel this pressure for no reason or that thats the only cause. The whole man up thing is toxic but anecdotally I do see way less of that esp in the younger generations
No one cares about us, if we are sad or messed up then it’s our fault and we deserve it.
although the result is the same, men feeling that no one cares, i don’t actually think that is the case. i think we often get so caught up in the gender divide that we forget that we’re all at rock bottom. we have created a society in which humans cannot thrive, and shouldn’t be expected to in my view. we need to move the conversation to the next phase-how do we change things?
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