In 2011 the male/female suicide rate differential in the UK was 3.0. In 2012 it was 3.5, the highest differential in more than 30 years:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/18/male-suicides-three-times-women-samaritans-bristol
From the article:
There were 4,590 male suicides registered in 2012, compared with 1,391 female, equating to 18.2 per 100,000 men and 5.2 per 100,000 women, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
When the data series began, in 1981, the male suicide rate was 1.9 times that for women. But the rate for women halved, with a much smaller decrease (from 19.8 in 1981) for men.
So in the space of 31 years, the male/female suicide rate differential has almost doubled, from 1.9 to 3.5. If that isn’t an indicator of society becoming differentially more hostile towards men over that period, I don’t know what is. From the article:
Clare Wyllie, head of policy and research at Samaritans, said the figures showed that the highest suicide rate was among men aged 40 to 44, at 25.9 deaths per 100,000. This bore out the charity’s own studies, which have found middle-aged men of low socioeconomic status to be most at risk. “They will grow up expecting by the time they reach mid-life they’ll have a wife who will look after them and a job for life in a male industry,” she said. “In reality they may find that they reach middle age in a very different position. Society has this masculine ideal that people are expecting to live up to. Lots of that has to do with being a breadwinner. When men don’t live up to that it can be quite devastating for them.”
Let’s reflect on the last line:
When men don’t live up to that it can be quite devastating for them.
Whilst the statement is objectively true, we need to ask why men increasingly “don’t live up to that.” Men – and particularly low-status men – have been assaulted by the state’s actions and inactions for 30+ years with respect to many areas, including:
1. Four out of seven unemployed people are men. Unemployment is a larger driver of male suicide than female suicide. Male unemployment has been increased by mass immigration, which has also depressed wages for unskilled workers. Where state initiatives aimed at driving up employment have a gender dimension, they always favour the employment of women over men.
2. State support of single mothers means that women no longer have to rely on men as partners – their reliance on men as taxpayers is, of course, enormous. So men keep paying the bills, but fewer men have the opportunities of being in a nuclear family.
3. Denial of access to children following relationship breakdowns. Low status men have no prospect of raising the large sums of money required for legal support over the long term.
How can such factors not be driving up the male suicide rate? Suicide is the leading cause of death of young men – driven in part by their education failures in a highly feminised education system.
From the article:
Paul Bristow, from the Mental Health Foundation, said: “We urgently need to know more about why being male is itself a risk factor in suicide and to do more to help men, especially young men, seek assistance rather than suffer in silence.” The study conducted by the University of Bristol and the Samaritans has funding from the Department of Health policy research programme.
You can be sure that no taxpayer-funded studies will point to an obvious conclusion, namely that the increasing male/female suicide rate differential is in large part a predictable consequence of a society which is ever more hostile towards men, and ever more supportive of women.
