You can compare those sorts of trends to what happens in NSSI (non-suicidal self-injury), which is very much a women's issue, and has some really interesting developmental breakpoints with regard to boys and girls.

“Worth mentioning is a neglected factor that contributes to the gender suicide ratio – the wound site or the area of the body that is wounded in firearm suicides. Males may have a higher rate of suicides by firearms partially due to their greater likelihood than women for shooting themselves in the head as opposed to the body. This has been related to gender differences in fear of facial disfigurement and suicide intent. Data from 807 suicides committed with firearms revealed that women were 47% less apt than men to shoot themselves in the head as well as use shotguns and rifles in their suicides (weapons that make head shooting awkward). The findings are consistent with the assumption that women are more concerned than men about facial disfigurement, and that women have a lower desire to die than men [33]. At this point one can see gender conditioning resulting not only from the psychopathology or suicidology, but also from psychology – women, even in the face of death (or only an attempt), are concerned with aesthetics and their own appearance.”

You can apply this to NSSI as well

"The findings are consistent with the assumption...that women have a lower desire to die than men"

The question is how much of the difference is fear based

and how much of it is strength of suicidal desire-based

how would you like to measure that ?

I hope I am not intruding but, I believe women are more sensitive towards themselves than men are. Although this is completely anecdotal, men tend to be reckless on both the ends. This can also be interlinked to the social factors which develop such mental conditioning, more so because of the reactions, a societal setting offers to men. Whereas, women, in general seem to generate more empathy from the peers, this could be the best possible explanation as to why they seem to be open about their problems. Because they don't receive hostile reactions from the peers which don't seem to be the case with men.

I think that is at least a very significant part of the problem

Your not intruding at all it’s almost 1 am where im at so I was about to go to sleep

Time zones are a wonderful thing.

There's no direct way to measure suicidal desire, in part because looking into the human heart (or brain) tends to provide you with a bunch of squishy material and little else. However, you can look at more specific categorical differences motivations between men and women. You can try to measure stress. You can ask whether suicide survivors were committing suicide based on loss of loved one or being left by one's SO, and how many were ostensibly economic in nature.

That sort of thing

I know that being left by a girlfriend/boyfriend is a disturbingly and surprisingly common motive

though I don't believe it is one of the top reasons

Some of these categories generate less suicidal desire than others, and are less easy to address by society.

..

It is hard to get good data on this from dead people though, so you have to use survivors as a proxy, which causes issues

Suicides don't happen based on a sole failure in life. There has to be enough piling up of problems behind the final motive. It's circumstances which dictate the move rather than a sole incident.

I'm not so sure, most suicides don't appear to be planned at all. So while I do agree that it is likely for there to be piling up problems in a sense, for most suicides you're looking for a more acute explanation than chronic.

I think more suicides are planned than not

@asparkofpyrokravte you don't really need to gather data from the successful suicide attempts, no reason you can't ask the survivors

http://www.sprc.org/news/planned-impulsive-suicide-attempts

Yeah, its like 13% planned

@InsaneCaterpilla Eh. Survivors aren't a random sample. I feel pretty confident in postulating that people who have a greater desire for suicide tend to use more final methods.

Sure, you can ask survivors and that will give you good data. But you can woozle yourself too that way.

It's that instant trigger which makes those pile of problems seem never ending. That trigger could be anything per se. I myself pondered about how liberating an early death would be after reading Nietzsche. It was nothing suicidal, but the amount of adversaries in life seemed never ending. Mind needs constant motivation.

In general they probably do, but people have even been known (in rare cases) to survive shooting themselves in the head

Yeah, I was thinking of that

There some people who clearly didn't have a last moment "oshit" moment and survived for sheer providence or coincidence

"It's that instant trigger which makes those pile of problems seem never ending...Mind needs constant motivation" <- so much yes.

The solution to the problem imo is rigorous promotion of mental health among young men and also generally among all. The industry should hire more mental health professionals and check the mental well being of their employees. Every problem could be tackled in some way or the other, its when we don't get a viable solution we look in the despair and think of dying. A prolonged connection with those sort of thoughts which increases suicidal tendencies.

Unfortunately, mental health professionals are often really, really bad at dealing with men, you can look into some of Elam's material for that

I think that's a great solution though

What counts as impulsive suicides to you @asparkofpyrokravte

I think there were suicide survivor studies that asked "when did you make the decision and why" and often it was related to a really recent event (like getting dumped), and made hours prior to the act.

But I'd have to go through the actual sources for that number from the website

I haven't researched that as much as I'd like for this sort of discussion

That's so true. Also mental health professionals mostly females, it's tough for them to understand the male psyche unless they are really experienced in their respective fields. We need more male psychologists. I think that's the key reason as to why men open up about their problems with their buddies rather than opting for professional help. They are often skeptic about the level of empathy that they won't have with the professionals.

@lazzzycarrot(30) / senpai(40) You can also look at the behavior of suicide survivors. While the risk of actually comitting suicide is greatly increased for those who have attempted in the past couple years, the numbers of those that actually do so remains low, below 5% IIRC

It's like 10% of people at some point in their lives decide life isn't worth living and act on it. 1% actually commit suicide, and some smaller number (0.1%?) legitimately hate life with a passion