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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
by 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 agoBecause 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 agoWhy 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 agoHmmm... then I don't know. Should have clarified that it was more of a guess than a solid answer.
- giovannibonetti 6y agoSo... Maybe the cause of this surge is just that women have become more effective in their attempts?