Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Suicide in men has been described as a “silent epidemic;” “epidemic” because of its high incidence and substantial contribution to men’s mortality, and “silent” because of a lack of public awareness, a paucity of explanatory research, and the reluctance of men to seek help for suicide related concerns. In British Columbia, suicide is one of the top three causes of mortality among men aged fifteen and forty-four. There appears to be an overall lack of public awareness regarding the high rates of suicide among men, especially relative to other more highly publicized threats to men’s health, such as HIV/AIDS, that account for far fewer premature deaths among males each year (e.g., in 2005, forty-five male deaths were attributed to AIDS in Canada, in contrast to 2857 male deaths from suicide). Given men’s general reluctance to seek help for suicide related concerns, and the stigma associated with mental health problems in general, it is no surprise that suicide among men is largely invisible. Findings from a range of intellectual traditions and disciplines, including contributions from quantitative and qualitative research paradigms, reveal much about the consequences of male suicide to society. This study sought to validate questionnaires measuring traditional male and female gender scripts in order to test the hypothesis that scores on these questionnaires predict suicidality. These novel findings have implications for understanding and predicting suicidality in men and women, and may be valuable in the clinical context.