Why do you think the highest suicide rate of all is of men approaching 50?

[RR64]

Why do you think the highest suicide rate of all is of nen approaching 50?

Surely this needs to be addressed?

Bellevu · Today 22:02
men tend to use more violent and terminal methods.

Bellevu, If that stacked up, younger men would have higher suicide rates than middle aged men.

Its tha age when people start reflecting on their lives. Once the DC flee the nest marriages may fail. Their role in life changes. Women still tend to have a more prominent family role.

Depending on the level of financial success, housing may be reduced to a basic room ( family remain in the home). As a consequence any dependant DC may drift away as dad can't have them to stay.

Men usually lose their DC on separation. A snatched odd hour is painful for NRP.

Not all middle aged people are homeowner, professional people with support.

Add in
The lack of MH support
Lack of housing
Lack of support to stay employed when struggling in life.

I lost a friend who went from a upper middle class lifestyle, 4 bed detached house to living in a 1 bed council flat on jobseekers. He had swallowed the whole 'benefits pay everything ' Daily Fail until it happened to him. Poor MH, alcoholism and realisation that this was now his lifestyle. He gassed himself in his car.

You're not understanding statistics. Of men and women, men use more terminal methods. Therefore although both men and women attempt, men die more.

Of age groups, that's other reasons. Specifically that 47.5 (I think) is the unhappiest point in life, statistically.

I'd guess it's a whole lot of things. Caring for parents, kids are teenagers, increasingly hopeless about possible huge change for the better, health starting to decline, massive responsibilities, fearing aging and so on. Least time off I imagine.

On my MHFA course couple years back it's this category and the most common profession was dentist which surprised me.

It's also twenty years from when drinking alcohol is legal.

Alcohol is, as I think most people know now, a depressant - one that causes problems with relationships, work and health apart from the effect upon mood and how it makes it far harder to deal with stressful or emotionally painful situations.

Dentists look into people's fearful faces all day

People being scared of you and fearful is hard to take day in day out

Apparently

Let's all talk about dentists then, rather than boring middle aged men.

Maybe that's part of the problem?

I discussed this with my DH a while ago whist he was down. There is a lot of pressure on men to provide and prove themselves. The also take it very personally like many of us women of they feel they have missed life's choices.

My DH is not happy where we live and has grafted hard all his life, but he feels opportunities have always passed him by or not been presented to him. We don't live in a well off area and by God he works hard but his pay is poor and he is not academically gifted. He says getting into his fifties, he worries about his pension, the lack of time left to get a mortgage and give us the life he wanted. I'm happy but I know he is not.

It's also twenty years from when drinking alcohol is legal.

?? 20 years? Not sure I follow.

Just a thought.

If you graph happiness over a lifetime it tends to be a roughly u-shaped curve, with the minimum being somewhere around that age, so it’s not surprising that suicide is a major issue at around the time if lowest happiness.

Thank you to the reply's to this thread.

Are you getting paid per post @RR64 … what is this “just a thought” post, and the “let’s talk about dentists instead of boring middle aged men” about in terms of relevance to your OP??

Just like you brushed off the fact more women attempt suicide than men. Never mind about boring old women eh

As someone who works in mental health, I can tell you that alot of men in this age bracket have poor mental health due to childhood abuse and domestic abuse, perpetrators being their partners (female and male ) I'm not saying this is the reason for suicide, athough in my experience, the reasons above play a big part in ill mental health in males, alongside relationship breakdown and loss of job/stress relating to job. and financial worries.

@RR64 I don’t know if your statistic is true or not but why would you ask in a female dominated forum to discuss or consider it. Death by suicide is tragic and we should all care but it’s not the duty of women and girls to campaign about every cause. I think those men in that age group are the ones to understand the reasons why and come up with the solutions, it’s not for another group to impose what they think the reasons might be.

@UmbilicusProfundus good point!
😍charts 😍

OK, I didn't quite explain that properly (I'm tired).

Drinking is legal at 18. Twenty years of drinking probably doesn't mean they're drinking excessively at first, but it creeps up over the first few years so that they're hitting middle age around 38-40 with a crap coping mechanism that doesn't do anything much but cause problems. So they drink more, their health gets worse, their relationships fail, their employment is less secure, they are more likely to be depressed, they drink more because they're unhappy, the drinking more makes them more depressed, they're less likely to be able to access treatment for depression whilst they're drinking, they have the loss of inhibition around impulsive actions when under the influence...which then leads over the following few years to an increase in suicide.

There's a very, very strong correlation between alcohol use and completing suicide in all groups, but middleaged men are more likely to be drinking at harmful levels and to have done it for a long time.

Re the point about alcohol. Alcohol dependence is second only to major depression globally among mental health problems in contributing to suicide. Men are disproportionately affected. Their 40s are when it has usually progressed to the point where their health and their relationships are breaking down.

More broadly: the Manchester group looked at this demographic group using the national confidential enquiry into suicide dataset. They found common factors: unemployment, deprivation, social isolation, bereavement, physical health problems, alcohol and/or other drug use, and mental health problems, mainly depression.

Huh?

I think it's worth saying that just because men are dying, doesn't mean women are at fault. Posting on MN is ignoring the fact that support services, by and large, are staffed by underpaid women. Crisis lines, homeless services, even counselling, mostly women.

It's men not supporting services with money and time that's missing. Maybe ask on Reddit or Twitter and get men to tell you why they aren't acting.

As a woman whose spent 30 years supporting people, more than half of whom were male (often 100% were male), I don't think women are the issue.

It’s very sad indeed. I think middle aged women are a bit better at accepting help and making supportive networks. For some men it can be very difficult to reach out and voice sadness and despair. Especially if there’s a history of trauma. Especially if they cope by being busy at work or using substances.

Women have more varied lives on average and don't get judged so much on their "success".

Men feel like a failure if they've got job, financial, relationship problems. And they often don't know how to deal with their feelings. They are also naturally more aggressive which means they are more likely to actually go through with it.

I know quite a lot of men in this age bracket - I have come to realise that the male mid life crisis is definitely a thing.

Ditto. I've come to realise it's one of those stereotypes that definitely exists for a reason.

There will be multiple reasons but overall it's an issue for men to fix. Most of them are emotionally stunted in many ways. Until they address that and learn better coping mechanisms for stress and worry then this statistic is just going to be one of those things that happens in a highly competitive, superficial, consumerist society.

I read a study years ago that looked at the suicide notes and lifestyle of people who had survived a suicide attempt and compared this to people who sadly had not. Looking to identify what, if any, differences were happening between these two groups. (I can't find the study though). It said that people who had died through suicide were more likely to feel burdensome on close family/friends and they were also more likely to have a high tolerance for pain (through self-harm, injury or maybe they were into sports like boxing). I've always thought about this and maybe men are more likely to feel burdensome than women during middle age. Women are more likely to be in a caring role, either their own children, or their parents or even their job and this could act as a buffer against suicide?

It is very sad, and suicide is something that society has to look at more closely, it really is an indication of a very sick society that dying is more tolerable than the pain of living.