5 ms·

According to the article, for Japan, the number of suicides for men in October is 1,302, up 229 from last year. The number of suicides for women in October is 8

• bioinformatics 6y ago
  I think we need to demand some equality, with either increasing the number of suicidal women or lowering the men. After all, equal outcomes is the only just outcome.
  • hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Well, they do point out an interesting trend. For example, "Femicide" is a hot topic right now in Mexico. "10 women are murdered every day", you'll frequently see mentioned in infographics shared on Mexican Facebook over the past year. There are marches and protests against femicide. Not to say that public attention should never focus on the ordeals of any specific group that doesn't hold the #1 prize in victimhood. But the thing is that you will read all these headlines and start to wonder what Mexico has against its women, and that life here must be especially tough for women when it comes to staying alive. When Mexico comes up in conversation, you might start mentioning things like "oof, really hard to be woman there right now!" Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico.
    • at_a_remove 6y ago
      I recall someone blurting out in horror on a forum that, gosh, a fourth of homeless people are women. How horrible. (I would later see this as an "aghast!" infographic in a newspaper) It's a bit like the UN's tweet in "support" of International Men's Day. Read it. It's bitterly amusing.
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
        The UN tweet for anyone interested: https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817 https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817
    • tremon 6y ago
      Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico. Given the new definition of femicide, shouldn't the figure be that 100% of homicide victims are men?
  • Yetanfou 6y ago
    What you are asking for is not equality - equal chances for men and women to become suicidal - but equity, equal numbers of suicidal men and women.
  • crowbahr 6y ago
    Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes.
    • klipt 6y ago
      I read it more as a comment that we pay a lot of attention to areas where women are doing worse but not much to areas where men are doing worse. This probably reflects a general societal bias where "missing woman" is seen as inherently more tragic than "missing man".
    • disown 6y ago
      > Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. So only agendas you support are allowed here? Who made you dictator? > Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes. The same goes for your comment. Instead of attacking someone why not add something constructive?
• ajay-d 6y ago
  The male increase looks more in line with the prior year fluctuations. The female increase is way more pronounced. Though I think universally, male suicide count is always higher, regardless of country.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    It varies and I am still reading data, but globally that seems to be the case. https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en There are a few exceptions. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Kenya, Liberia, etc.
• masklinn 6y ago
  > Seems strange to single out one gender here. Is it really? Male suicide increased 20% yoy, which is significant but… female suicide increased 80%. That is much more worrying if it's a trend.
  • scarmig 6y ago
    It's a bit unclear why it's particularly worrying that women might eventually have a suicide rate of X if a trend continues while men actually do have a suicide rate of X and have had that for decades.
    • devenblake 6y ago
      Because for every X suicides there are Y attempts, and that Y is statistically greater for women than it is for men (men generally tend to choose more lethal methods of suicide).
      • scarmig 6y ago
        Why should we weight the life of a person who attempts to kill themselves three times as three times as valuable as the life of someone who succeeds on the first attempt? Even within a given category of method of suicide, men have a greater success rate. Places where the most efficacious method of killing yourself (guns) are banned still maintain a ~3:1 male:female suicide death ratio. A naive read on suicide attempt:success rates suggest that men are literally 10x as effective of women in achieving their aims. That's the kind of ratio that suggests that there's something big not being captured in the statistics, and in that case it's important to focus on the more objective measure (a death by suicide) than something relatively subjective (a suicide attempt)
        • devenblake 6y ago
          Hmmm... then I don't know. Should have clarified that it was more of a guess than a solid answer.
      • giovannibonetti 6y ago
• Kluny 6y ago
  We've been hearing about male suicide rates for years. The female suicide rate is the story because it's different.
• DanBC 6y ago
  To explain this: in many places women attempt suicide at high rates. If women start using a more lethal method the rate of death will increase to be similar to men. There are some factors that we think are protective that we use to help explain the difference in rates of death between men and women (more likely to be part of a family, more likely to ask for help, more likely to have contact with health care, less likely to use a more dangerous method, etc etc) and if these factors are changing for women we need to understand what's going on because understanding will also help us protect men. All suicide prevention focuses on middle aged men because that's the highest risk group, but they don't ignore other groups.