Exploring the issue of male suicide
An international collection of papers on male suicidal behaviour was published on 7th February, 2012 as a Special Issue by the journal, Social Science and Medicine. the collection was co-edited by Anne Cleary. The collection is part of the output of her time spent in UC Berkeley on a Fulbright award. Men are at least four times more likely to complete suicide than women (in Ireland and elsewhere) yet the reasons for their greater vulnerability is largely unexplored. This anthology is unique in that it brings together for the first time a series of papers from diverse cultures and disciplines as well as different methodological approaches to studying suicide. The papers examine broader based, statistical, themes in suicide as well as the detail, for example, examining the narratives of men who made a near-fatal suicide attempt in an attempt to understand why they took this decision.
According to the World Health Organisation, suicide is a major international public health issue. Each year up to one million people worldwide die of suicide and approximately four times as many men as women take their own lives. The reasons why men are at greater risk of suicide are largely unknown and research to date offers little understanding of the process and meaning of suicide for the individuals concerned. This research area was the focus of Anne's Fulbright work in the University of California in Berkeley and has led, in collaboration with a US colleague, Silvia Canetto, to the publication of a collection of papers on the subject[i]. This collection brings together, for the first time, an international and interdisciplinary collection of articles examining male suicidal behaviour in different cultural environments using both qualitative, in-depth methods of inquiry, as well as quantitative approaches. The papers are based on research in Canada, Australia, Ghana, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States from the disciplines of public health, sociology, psychology and history. The collection provides further evidence of a strong socio-cultural and gender dimension in suicide. In this way, the kind of rules and behaviours men adhere to in their society has an important impact on decisions relating to suicide. For example, Western men who adopt traditional, rigid, beliefs about how to behave as a man are more likely to contemplate suicide than those who embrace less traditional beliefs. In identifying both the association of some masculinity practices with suicidal behaviour, and, at the same time emphasising the very great diversity, and fluidity, of masculinities and practices this collection rejects the idea of an inherent male vulnerability to suicide. The anthology should therefore contribute to a new, more gender accurate discourse about suicide and also generate more gender-grounded suicide prevention.
[i] Canetto, S. & Cleary, A. (2012) Men, masculinities and suicidal behaviour. A Special Issue of Social Science and Medicine.