Talk of male suicide remains in vogue and the flavour of the month, and I’m glad. Well intended awareness is being made, and conversations had, that encourage men to better understand themselves, and express their feelings with others. But as I’ve said a number of times, although this is to be applauded, it is simply not a complete solution – and more so, this approach is not working fast enough to lower the shockingly high rates of #malesuicide. So I want to share some new information about the things that suicidal men *are* talking about, which are shaping their distress, and pushing them down the road to suicide. ‘The negative life events’ associated with male suicide, to be specific. This is part of a wider movement and fundamental shift in strategy, where male suicide is increasingly not being seen through the prism of ‘mental health crisis’, but instead as a crisis of relationship breakdown, debt, joblessness, disability, sexuality, experiences of abuse and sexual violence, and perhaps most pertinently - child custody loss. So as the spotlight burns down on the idea of ‘man can talk’, I will once again try to swing it momentarily toward the research that shows – 20% of male suicides are related to relationship breakdown and loss of contact with children, as well as other such data points. For what use is asking men to talk, if we are not willing to listen to, or act upon the issues they are talking about? What do you think – is it time for a new view of male suicide? ~ NVDPS  Child Custody APPG Men and Boys Report on Male Suicide  Images by Gradienta, Mathias Reding, Lachlan Dempsey, Henry Co, X Wen GI, Black Kiwi Hug from Unsplash. #malesuicideawareness #mensissues #suicideprevention #mensmentalhealth

2023-04-17