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If you’re having trouble understanding what this map means, it means that the suicide rate for men is higher than for women everywhere, notably 5 to 6 times higher in Eastern Europe and Russia, and 8 times higher in a couple of Central American countries and West Africa.
I wonder what makes men the world over decide that suicide is the best option.
I would imagine toxic masculinity.
Men are encouraged to be stoic and not express their emotions.
Most men don’t have a single friend they can talk openly about their emotions with.
They are also told their entire lives that everyone relies on them and then are publicly shamed if they fail. Plus being first in line for any violent conflict, where they might lose the few friends they have and no outlets since showing any weakness is punished.
It’s interesting how terms like toxic masculinity lead to instant downvotes from a certain type of person but if you make the exact same comment without it you get zero downvotes.
It’s almost like people have been conditioned to be reflexively averse to specific words without actually understanding what they mean.
It’s just a poor term overall. To a lot of people it sounds like masculinity itself was toxic and bad, instead of pointing to a toxic form of it.
Should just have a better, less confusing word for it.
Toxic masculinity was a term coined by men wanting to be free from the expectations of the patriarchy. It’s beyond heart breaking that so many men parodoxically react with anger to this phrase. Double so while bemoaning the lack of mental health options for men.
My good dudes, you’re literally building the cages for yourself.
Not just that. In 90% of suicide attempt, the decision was made within an hour before the attempt. Impulsivity is a component and men are more impulsive. We also see that people with ADHD are more likely to attempt suicide too. Not only that, women who take the pill are 2x more likely to attempt suicide and 3x more likely to succeed. This is because estrogens stimulate the frontal lobe and are needed for emotional stability and cognitive control. Which is also why girls outperform boys on average in academic settings as well.
This means the difference isn’t just a social issue. Suicide rates have been increasing for both men and women in the western world the past 20 years. Thankfilly, that doesn’t mean we can’t improve it.
But we can’t expect it to ever be 50/50. Unless ofcourse we make women’s lives worse. But that’s not solving men’s problems.
I wonder what makes men the world over decide that suicide is the best option.
Because if you don’t have a partner and high paying job, you aren’t just worthless, you are a burden.
Hey now, you can have both of those things and still be a burden.
I’m going to need proof
It just seems like some of y’all want a self fulfilling prophecy.
I mean to an extent, it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Whether or not it’s the case, it’s often felt my men that they have to be the breadwinner, or at least the point of strength. They can have people around them that tell them otherwise, but if they don’t feel like they measure up then that’s what it will be.
People don’t often just commit suicide because they’re like “I guess this is how the math works out”, they felt, or were told, or told themselves, that things can only be better if they’re gone. In every case, they won’t be, but that’s where their mental journey led them
Men are overly hormonal. Domestic abuse, war, homicide… They should take a more logical stance instead of being a slave to their feelings.
What a great specimen of Finnish self-aware sarcasm.
Lol it isn’t sarcasm. If you would like to test my hypothesis, next time you see a man raging, tell him he is being overly hormonal. 99% chance he will not calm down and start behaving logically XD
99% chance you’ll get that response from anyone being angry…regardless of sex or gender.
You’re saying that men should sever their feelings? How is that even possible? What do you feel like is the right way to do that?
Its a joke. The point is that women are often being told that they are too emotional (as opposed to the very logical men), even though men are often the ones with violent outbursts.
No my friend, but assuming that feelings, emotions, and hormones are something negative that need to be ignored or done away with is an artefact of patriarchy and we can throw that whole shit away.
Women actually attempt suicide more. Men just die from it more. This is mostly because men tend to use firearms and women tend to use poisoning/overdose (not necessarily narcotics)
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Notably almost all of Eastern Europe too, where guns are pretty easy to get even illegally (thanks Czechia and Estonia)
I wonder if evolution isn’t at play. Females killing themselves off is an awful reproductive strategy. Males doing the same is not such a big deal.
If I’m not clear: A woman takes about a year from attempting to get pregnant to gestation to birth to recovery. I could impregnate hundreds of women in a year. And so could any other man. We’re simply not as valuable.
And yes, men have plenty of value outside sperm donation, I was trying to shine a harsh light.
You’re right. Estrogens play an important role in brain development. They stimulate a few regions in the brain, which include parts of the limbic system and the frontal lobe. Both playing a huge role in emotional stability and impulse control.
Now what we see in both primates and humans, is that when males get frustrated, they will seek out a weaker opponent to unleash it on. This usually is a juvenile or their mother. Females are weaker, and don’t have many targets to terrorize. They absolutely would if they could. So estrogens play a role in self control.
Women inherited this benefit. The emotional and cognitive control that estrogens enhance, is why women are less impulsive, have lower expression of aggression and perform much better in schools. This is because estrogens stimulate brain development in girls and it gives them an advantage over boys.
We also found that men with normal testosterone levels have this effect too. In pretty much all animals where we studied this, higher levels of testosterone correlate with higher levels of aggression. Not only that, in both humans and rats, t-levels fluctuated based on social hierarchy. Changing as status changes. This may have to do with self preservation and making sure you don’t piss off a stronger opponent.
But in humans, slightly higher levels of testosterone correlate with less aggressive behaviours. This is because when men and women produce more androgens, they produce more estrogens. And so the self-control for men increases.
Furthermore. Women who take the contraceptive pill are twice more likely to attempt suicide and 3 times more likely to succeed than women who don’t take the pill. This is why estrogens are added to prevent depression. A well known side effect of the pill.
Hierarchy, military conflict, and expected economic outlook. All three are pretty bleak in the worst regions shown. External powers have the first, the countries in question are engaged in the later, and the next 20-50 years are pretty bleak for typical male occupations for the countries in question. I would expect Argentina to rise over the next few years, but who knows women may kill themselves at a higher rate under a fascist govt.
We are not as good at voicing our issues with a committed support network and we are way better at following through on suicidal ideation.
Shit life syndrome
I wonder what makes men the world over decide that suicide is the best option.
No one cares, and life is cruel and cold. The end.
Thank you for explaining it.
I have no way to know the lived experience of women, but I have observed since about 4 years of age that the buck stops with me. I, and I suspect the vast majority of men, have no backstop - If I have any problem that I can’t fix myself, or can’t pay money to get assistance with, I am fucked.
I hear anecdotally that women are more likely to tell people about suicidal ideation… Does this imply that women have better results using social networks to move past the stressors or illness behind that ideation?
Best case if I was feeling like I couldn’t bear to keep living and told someone, maybe a family member would have me committed for my own good. Then after the imprisonment, I am also unemployed and still have no one with the bandwidth to help me deal with whatever issues I was having.
Afaik suicide attempt rates are 2-3x more common in women than men. Men are just more likely to choose methods that are more deadly.
Not to belittle it on either side but I do wonder what causes that disparity. Is it that men plan it more thoroughly or have access to more dangerous methods? Do women choose methods that, unintentional or not, can be backed out of more easily? Are women more likely to report a failed attempt than men? If that 2-3x factor is true, then why don’t we see similar numbers of idk completion? I hesitate to say success because it is very much not a success to commit suicide, there are always other options, even if they’re not perfect.
In part the reasons are perpetrated by media and culture. If you go back to the medieval period records men and women died at about the same rate and they both used predominantly drowning and hanging as method.
Think about the dramatization of suicide for a hot minute and poison shows up as having this stigma of being a woman’s weapon or the “easy way out” more often than not the dramatic gut punch for men has been stuff like a gun to the head, hanging, jumping off a tall something… Something violent and effective and “brave” for lack of a better term. Certain types of death are coded as “emasculating” and those types of death are generally easier to rescue someone from because of the length of time between making the decision and actual death.
The deaths of women (at least provided they are not villians) in media are more often played up for gore and empathy when they are violently murdered but played down when it comes to suicide. Either the type used is quiet and gives the illusion of the peaceful end of quiet despair, it happens off screen or the camera angle changes to soften the impact. There is no comparative “unwomanly” way to die. This is in part because at some level it hits different. Executioners in women’s prisons have reported that it effected them way more and caused mental traumas. People who make fiction use this to manipulate the way you’re supposed to feel.
At some level with enough iteration you create expectations of what suicides are supposed to look like based on their individual thematic meanings… Which are coded by gender.
have access to more dangerous methods?
Are there any methods that are available to men that aren’t available to women?
Women are more likely to opt for “clean” methods to avoid leaving a mess for grieving family. Paracetamol overdose, poisons, natural gas. For whatever reason (and anecdotally I can blame the way women are socialised to put others first by valuing “feminine” traits of caring and nurturing) women will go for a slower, even more painful method if it means less trauma for those finding the body. Women often have an existing support network that “failed” them, and they don’t want that support network to feel guilty, so making their death seem “peaceful” plays into the suicide plan.
Men are more likely to go for methods that are quick and effective because the ultimate goal is to die. Men don’t have that same support network, there was nobody there to “fail” these men, they often had no one in the first place, so there’s not as much consideration for what the method of death may mean for those left behind. Men are more likely to jump in front of trains or shoot themselves.
The support network plays into this as well, because women often have other people, they may accidentally let on that something has changed in their lives suicide motivation. Even a simple “you’re a great friend, thank you for being there” text could send a red flag and women are more likely to have paramedics called by a suspicious friend or family member.
Because men often don’t have anyone, they don’t raise any red flags, so their attempts have no external intervention.
That’s a lot of good info, but it sounds like the short answer to my question is “no?”
Sorry, I replied to the wrong level in that comment thread and in doing so didn’t answer your question at all because I wasn’t thinking about your question specifically.
Women have all the same options as men, but because of the way women are socialised those options seem unfavourable.
because of the way women are socialised those options seem unfavourable.
Do you think the inverse is also true? That men are socialized in a way that makes certain options seem unfavorable? For example, men are far less likely to pick methods that give other people a chance to intervene.
Now I’ll be thinking about suicide by penis all night.
Personally, I think it comes down to two things. The first has to do with the root causes of the suicidality. If what you have is severe, can-barely-get-out-of-bed depression, you’re more likely to choose a more passive and less likely to succeed method like swallowing the pills you currently have in your medicine cabinet. If one of your root causes is anger, then you’re more likely to choose a more active method like leaving the house and finding a tall building.
And the second is that men are twice as likely to own a firearm.
Men prefer guns and women prefer pills. The study from back in the day . … https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11079640/
This is confusing as shit
Why? The red and orange are close in color, otherwise it shows if it is green in color, more women commit suicide than men, then the ratio goes up by color
If it is green then they have the same average right? 1:1. But in this graph it would be difficult to show when more women committed suicide, which might nowhere be the case.
Or you’d get 0.5 with a color match, for example.
You needed to explain that for it to make sense
That’s the point of the color bar on the bottom, a part of any good graph
The color bar means nothing without any label.
The numbers, right there on the bar, and the text at the top of the image.
“male to female suicide ratio” and then the numbers 1-10, it even explains that it’s (men’s suicides / women’s suicides) so anyone who doesn’t know what a ratio is can enjoy as well
- 1: same number of men and women
- 2: twice as many men, as women
- 3: three times as many… Etc
- x: x times as many men
Does this help?
It does but if it was good it wouldn’t need an explanation.
The title explains it… If it isn’t clear by that, it explains what that means in the text below. That my explanation was necessary is not really the fault of the infographic
I disagree.
I agree with the OP. You’re bad at reading graphs, unfortunately
Are you colorblind?
I’m a man, USA. In my personal experience, which doesn’t mean very much, I’ve noticed that men seem unable to accept catastrophy. They try to reason or wiggle a way out of it. Woman seem more at ease when dealing with horrible events.
If I had to guess, it is a difference in perception and experience. Perhaps men are groomed to be “providers, problem solvers,” and so they despair at unsolvable problems, while women are told not to “overreact,” and to “support” others in times of crisis. Like a weird inverted effect of patriarchal society.
Expanding on this it could be that women deal with catastrophe (e.g. SA/rape) much earlier in life so later catastrophes are perceived as imminently survivable.
Women are also often taught to expect unfairness.
It would be interesting to find a way to also represent the overall rate. Some of these countries really stand out for their high male:female ratio even though their overall rates are not particularly high.
Total numbers aren’t relevant for ratios unless the numbers are low enough that the ratio swings wildly from year to year.
Low numbers could also mean that the tracking/reporting in that country isn’t very good and therefore the data isn’t reliable.
In some cultures suicide has a very negative stigma attached to it, which can result in suicide deaths being reported with other causes.
In some cultures suicide has a very negative stigma attached to it, which can result in suicide deaths being reported with other causes.
Aka in the In-Famous Korean Fan Deaths
Do you think that the consistent trend worldwide of male suicides being a higher proportion that female suicides is actually incorrect and it is either balanced or the ratio actually skews towards more female suicides?
If not, what is the purpose of trying to undermine the overall results by focusing entirely on the possibility that they might not be exactly correct?
The map itself focuses on the proportion. Wanting better data doesn’t need an agenda.
Yeah, data could be skewed for countries with very low populations. That could be why Greenland is left out, despite data being available from the wikipedia page that the data is taken from.
Wasn’t paying attention and misread the map at first. It’s showing male suicides / female suicides. So a green nation would be 1:1 equal suicide by gender. So every nation has a strong bias towards male suicide, some much more so than others.
Considering various social taboos around suicide, I’m not sure how reliable such data is.
Counting corpses is pretty reliable, objective data.
Provided the cause of death gets reported truthfully
This is true. And in communities around the world where suicide is stigmatized, there is heavy pressure on authorities to record deaths as “accidental” rather than suicide. In fact, this is borne out by statistics in which you see higher rates of death attributed to accident in such communities, once you control for other variables. This is especially the case in societies in which there is social shunning of entire families who have lost someone to suicide. The coroner in these communities may worry with good reason about serious mistreatment of families if there is a public record of suicide. It’s also not unreasonable to think that this misreporting may play into the gender divide in suicides. If different sexes tend to use different methods, some of these methods are much more ambiguous and easier to record as an accident than others.
Could you elaborate on what angle you’re coming from? It’s a trend on worldwide scale, social taboos can hardly be a reason for much inaccuracy.
I’m not talking about the general trend of more men committing suicide than women. I just think that the specific ratios for different countries might not be that accurate.
Is it all attempted suicides or successful suicides only?
A suicide rate means successful, just like a murder rate is successful murders and not attempted murder.
Thank you for clarifying
Successful. Women actually attempt suicide more, but more often choose drug overdoses rather than immediately fatal means.
Women actually attempt suicide more
Is that on a unique persona basis or does a person with a failed attempt skew the numbers with a second?
Green is such a beautiful, bright, shiny color… unmissable you might even say. I see it nowhere except the legend though. :-(
There’s nowhere on earth where women are as good at killing themselves as men are.
Yaayyyyy… we did it…
Hello,
Didn’t we all move to !map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz ?
I didn’t know about that community, but I also don’t see why I shouldn’t post here? The beauty of the Fediverse is that there can be many places that serve the same purpose.
So, while there’s no green, I think it’d be interesting to consider what’s going on in the yellow places. Its likely those areas are close to parity even if male suicide is (marginally?) higher.
Particularly India and China.
Edit: just India, China is on the higher end after looking into the actual numbers. Also, Grenada should show up as green on this map, but the creator chose to not include it. Admittedly, it wasn’t the only lesser Antilles island that was nixed so I’m not going to immediately call bias.
