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>Al­though men die by suicide at a higher rate, women have a higher rate of attempting suicide.16 This pattern is evident among youth and persists over the life

• vertex-four 10y ago
  Honestly, I have a suspicion that people go for the methods available to them - gun ownership is gendered in the first place.
  • Joeboy 10y ago
    I believe (but do not have a citation) the gender split also occurs here in the UK, where basically nobody has guns.
    • snerbles 10y ago
      "The UK suicide rate was 10.8 deaths per 100,000 population in 2014. The male suicide rate was more than 3 times higher than the female rate, with 16.8 male deaths per 100,000 compared with 5.2 female deaths" http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2014registrations http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea... EDIT - Further down in the article, the most common methods noted in the UK are hanging and poison.
      • vertex-four 10y ago
        What's the suicide attempt rate, though? The argument is that men are more successful at going through with suicide than women, due to chosen methods.
        • snerbles 10y ago
          These statistics do not show attempt rate. It does show a gendered difference of poisoning (19% male vs 37% female) and hanging (55% male vs 44% female). While I don't have a link, it is often reported that women are more likely to use poison/overdose for suicide attempts in the U.S. - it is a reasonable to assume it is the same case in the UK.
        • DanBC 10y ago
          Chosen method is probably important, and in the UK we're seeing more women die by suicide because they're choosing more violent methods. There's some other stuff going on too. Possibly women have better social support networks; they're possibly better than men at asking for help and talking about the problems they're having. (This is one reason people keep banging on about getting men to talk). Possibly women find it easier to get psychiatric help. Men tend to see doctors less often, and tend not to talk about some subjects when they're there. Women see doctors more often, and talk about emotions more readily. Men are more vulnerable to some "triggers" -- relationship breakdown (partly because they sometimes lose contact with children and for the social network stuff mentioned above) or loss of job.
• R_haterade 10y ago
  It's possible that men survive attempts and tell no one as well, whereas a woman might. Who can really say?
  • whybroke 10y ago
    To survive an attempted gun suicide is such an unspeakably, crippling and horrendous thing, it's almost unbearable to contemplate. It is certainly not something that could easily be hidden.
    • therealgimli 10y ago
      Then again, it's common to claim an accident while cleaning one's gun.
      • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
        No, it's really not. It's like having a "hunting accident" with someone you don't like. Most guns get cleaned after use. That's a lot of instances of guns being cleaned, maybe hundreds or thousands of times over the life of the gun. People say they were "taking it apart to clean it" when they're being careless or plain dumb. If it was actually a malfunction or easy to make accident then it would be widely known that some guns are more or less user friendly (idiot proof) than others. While I don't doubt some people have genuine accidents they're fewer and farer between than carelessness disguised as an accident.
        • Chris2048 10y ago
          How many guns can be easily armed while cleaning?
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• RubyMyDear 10y ago
  I'm glad people aren't shying away from this issue. It's a "mens rights" issue, and as such it's nearly taboo to speak about. Suicide has different reasons for men and women. Women make half-hearted attempts as a means of seeking attention and controlling other people.
• Mz 10y ago
  I am a woman. I attempted suicide at age 17. I went though my desk drawers, etc. I found some pills, maybe decongestants, and decided that would probably not kill me. I found an exacto knife in my art supplies and decided to cut my wrist with it. I failed to hit a major artery. There was very little blood. In contrast, I believe my brother's room had a gun, a bow and an encyclopedia of true crime. Had he attempted suicide while locked in his room, there would have been dramatically greater access to effective means and useful information for actually ending up dead. I will suggest that women generally have less access to effective means, generally have less exposure to subjects relevant to figuring out how to end a life, and that women are typically subjected to a greater amount of social control that limits their ability to act. Men are more likely to be infantrymen, police officers, hunt as a hobby, etc. Thus, they are just more likely to know how to kill something. Additionally, successful suicides occur when you are alone. Men seem to have more opportunities to actually be alone, an observation I made years ago on a different forum about a different subject. Women typically make less money than men, so they are less likely to be able to afford a place of their own. They tend to have roommates. Following a divorce, women are more likely to get custody of the children. So, post divorce, men are more likely to be living alone, women are more likely to be living with kids. Etc. If you attempt suicide with other people at home, you need to keep it a secret. If they find out, they will stop you. Simply having other people around is a deterrent to succeeding. It is hard to very quietly, secretly off yourself. So, I think one factor is that women are less likely to have sufficient privacy, for lack of a better word, to succeed.
  • duaneb 10y ago
    This seems to be American centric, though. Even when the means (eg hanging and poison mentioned earlier) are readily available to both sexes there is still a sexed difference.
    • Mz 10y ago
      I don't know why you would think that poison or hanging are equally available to both genders. In the aggregate, there are significant differences in not only career choices but hobby choices and other aspects of lifestyle. It in no way surprises me this impacts aggregate statistics on methodology. I posit that many supposed gender differences are rooted in the different life experiences of the sexes: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/princesses-dont-start-starships.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/princesses-d...
• nv-vn 10y ago
  I think especially with the types of methods men vs. women use, a lot of men are much more committed to their actions when they choose suicide. By hanging oneself (something that probably isn't any more difficult for one gender or the other), you basically "guarantee" your own death. Making the decision to overdose on something gives you a chance to stop earlier and gives others more time to step in. I think this is an unconscious factor based on the causes that the decision stems from -- for example, it seems that women with bipolar disorder get more depressive episodes. Since they're more likely to try suicide during these episodes, that would explain the increased rate. Yet because a higher ratio of the men committing suicide are not suffering from bipolar disorder, it might mean that they've had depression for a larger period of time (making them take a firmer decision on how to end their life).
• jwp729 10y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about your loss. I'm glad you're able to get help through counseling.
• igravious 10y ago
  > Are women more likely, consciously or unconsciously, to be social signaling for support than men when they attempt suicide? No they are not. You answered your own question. Women are more likely to use non-violent methods, men are more likely to use violent methods. Violent methods are more likely to kill the victim, therefore more men die by suicide as a percentage overall. Now your question becomes. Why those methods? And the answer I believe is not social signalling. Or at least it is not the main factor. I believe the answer is to do with aggression (being higher in men than women due to testosterone) and the unwillingness to cause disfigurement (because of social reasons). Source, I read a scientific book on it.
  • dempseye 10y ago
    > No they are not. How do you know?
• asher_ 10y ago
  This is a complex issue. There are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about suicide attempts. The first thing is that the paper cited in this article to back up this claim actually does not say that females have a higher rate of attempting suicide, but rather that they have a higher rate of deliberate self-harm. These two things are not equivalent. The second factor to consider is the availability and accuracy of self-harm or suicide attempt statistics. Males are far less likely to seek professional help, as noted in the article, so it stands to reason that far more male suicide attempts and actions of deliberate self harm go unreported, even if this data is gathered independently, as males are in general less likely to share such things. Suicide attempts are often unsuccessful. It's harder to complete than is the general belief. Success rates are something like 5%. If we were to assume that the base incidence rate of suicide attempts for males and females was the same, we would still expect more men to die by suicide because of the related statistics about seeking help/treatment. I'm not saying that the base levels are the same, I'm just giving a hypothetical to show how the variables interact. This is not a simple picture. The personal and cultural stigma around suicide makes things like this very difficult to untangle.
• rcpt 10y ago
  Very recently I lost my brother to. How do you deal with this? My contact is in my profile.
• cheez 10y ago
  I have experience with suicidal women (no, I do not attract a certain type): it is definitely attention-seeking behavior. Not in the way like dressing provocatively in the wrong contexts can be attention seeking (think clubbing outfits to go grocery shopping) but attention seeking nonetheless. Yes, it's a data point of a handful, but I am thoroughly convinced that women are generally way too self protective to actually commit suicide. Now if a woman does actually do it.... She was seriously gone. I've never known a suicidal man, does not mean they don't exist, just that they don't talk about it.