From a Samaritans report I’ll be covering shortly:
Death by suicide can be described as a problem of men. Suicide incidence is higher among men than women across the western world. In the UK, men are three times more likely than women to end their own lives. The male to female ratio for completed suicide has increased over time in the UK; rates of suicide among women have steadily decreased over the last 50 years, while suicide rates among men overall are at comparable levels to the 1960s.
One of the areas in which we expect to be making proposals when we officially launch Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them) will be male suicide. Disadvantaged men in midlife are at particular risk of ending their own lives, and I learned today of a Samaritans report, Why disadvantaged men in mid-life die by suicide. Many of these men are, of course, systematically disadvantaged in a society which relentlessly and ruthlessly advantages women at the expense of men. The public sector was once a major employer of men, but now almost two-thirds of public sector employees are women. This helps drive the differential between female and male unemployment rates (for every three women registered as unemployed, four men are), yet the provisions of the Equality Act (2010) permit public sector organisations to favour women over men in recruitment and promotion terms. Such legislation drives unemployment among men, and drives up the male suicide rate. It’s an issue I covered at length in Feminism: the ugly truth (2012).
The Samaritans report is downloadable here:
It’s about damned time society cared more about the male suicide rate.
