5 ms·
Suicide attempts, however, are far higher in females: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicid
by ac29 6y ago
Suicide attempts, however, are far higher in females: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml
This is in part because males choose more effective suicide methods - they are approximately twice as likely to use firearms.
- bitshiftfaced 6y agoBut couldn't that be because some do it as a cry for help?
- throwaway3699 6y agoYeah I suspect this is the reason. It'd be pretty stupid to insinuate a whole gender is ineffective at suicide.
- domnomnom 6y agoThe insinuation was a gender was more effective.
- watwut 6y agoSuicide attempt as cry for help clearly suggests you are not psychologically ok and that you need help now.
- bitshiftfaced 6y agoIf anything, that makes me think that we need to give more emotional attention and care to boys, since they're less likely to seek help (even if the method for seeking help is destructive).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mlang23 6y agoA female friend of mine who worked at a psychiatric clinic for a while told me years ago that most suicide attempts are really just attempts of getting attention / cries for help. Choosing a less effective method is likely pretty deliberate.
- watwut 6y agoYou are aware that this, even if it would be true, does not suggest that they are psychologically ok? Instead, they are in distress and need help.
- fastball 6y agoYes, but arguably the person that wants to actually really kill themselves as effectively as possible is less ok than someone crying out for help and deliberately choosing "suicide" methods that are much less likely to actually end in death. Statistically, if you are a parent with a child that is not emotionally OK, a son is more likely to kill himself, which is not reversible / recoverable. So at least while those stats remain true, the idea that girls need more emotional support is not backed up by the evidence I'm looking at.
- watwut 6y agoStatistically, the best thing I can do there is to keep him away from guns and to not have them in household. That really works, then he has only less fatal means available to him. Then of course there are things like treating him as normal multidimensional human as opposed to as emotionless competing machine as people in these HN theads write about boys. Like, the boys I know in real life are way more multifaceted people, they do have emotions and everything. They have relationship issues with regards to their friends. They do have to deal with bullying from their friends both physical and emotional. When young, they are not walking constantly fighting trouble people in this discussion describe. When teenagers, they are not only-cares-about sport and violent games kind of guys. Nor closes himself to his room and ignores the family which is actually supposed to be cool thing about boys kind of guys. Reading gender sterotypes on HN about boys, one would believe it is impossible for boy to become artist, writer, scientist or philosopher. Except in real world, boys and men engage in all those. But really, median boy that live in my bubble is not destructive machine. There are few boys that do cause disproportional trouble, but majority of them are nice humans. Back to girls, I would be careful to trust people who find all these attempts to "not be serious" at the time of trying. Majority of them is serious. People who act like they are not serious or just cry for attention that needs to be ignored are how girls dont get help they need.