September 10, 2024 was World Suicide Prevention Day. According to the World Health Organization,
“Every year 726,000 people kill themselves and there are many more people who attempt suicide.”
When I was five, my middle-aged father overdosed on sleeping pills after becoming increasingly depressed because he couldn’t support his family doing the work he loved. Fortunately, he survived, but our lives were never the same. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to prevent it from happening to other families.
Although women, like men, can kill themselves, men at every age are at higher risk than women. However, suicide is rarely discussed as a health issue for boys and men.
World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) was established in 2003 by the International Association for Suicide Prevention in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). On September 10u each year they focus attention on the issues, reduce stigma and raise awareness among organizations, governments and the public, giving a unique message that suicide is preventable.
The triennial theme for World Suicide Prevention Day 2024-2026 is ‘Changing the Narrative on Suicide’ with the call to action ‘Start the Conversation’. This theme aims to raise awareness of the importance of reducing stigma and encouraging open conversations about suicide prevention. Changing the narrative about suicide is about transforming how we perceive this complex issue and moving from a culture of silence and stigma to one of openness, understanding and support.
The call to action encourages everyone to start the conversation about suicide and suicide prevention. Every conversation, no matter how small, contributes to a supportive and understanding society. By starting these vital conversations, we can break down barriers, raise awareness and create better cultures of support.
I have written a series of articles—”Coming Home: An Evolutionary Approach to Treating Depression and Preventing Suicide.” In Part 1, I shared statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health comparing suicide rates for men and women at various ages:
Even during our youth, when suicide rates are relatively low, men are still more likely to kill themselves than women. It is also clear to me, as my wife and I move into our 80s, that men and women face many challenges as we age, but older men are the ones who end their lives more often by suicide at rates 8 to 17 times higher than for females.
In Part 2, I discussed the evolutionary roots of male/female differences and quoted Dr. Roy Baumeister, one of the world’s leading social scientists. Understanding his work can help us better understand a lot about why men are the way they are, and specifically why men are the risk-taking sex.
In his groundbreaking book, Is there anything good for men? How civilizations flourish by exploiting mensays,
“If evolutionary theory is right about anything, it’s right about reproduction. Nature will most favor traits that lead to reproductive success. But for thousands of years, men and women have faced very different odds and problems in reproduction. In this basic task, women faced a good chance of success, while men were born to face a looming failure.”
Not only do men take more risks than women, but they are also less resilient and more prone to feelings of failure when they feel they cannot provide something of value to those they love.
In Part 3, I show that suicide is the most widespread form of violence and is the cause of more deaths than war or homicide. We don’t often think of suicide as a form of violence or depression as an underlying cause of violence, but they are closely related. The World Health Organization (WHO) produced an in-depth analysis of violence and published the information under the title “The Global Report on Violence and Health”. The report is the result of 3 years of work, during which WHO relied on the knowledge of more than 160 experts from more than 70 countries.
The report details the estimated world-related deaths as follows:
These numbers vary in different years, and violent death rates also vary by country and within each country with different groups. But it is clear that suicide violence accounts for almost as many deaths as war-related violence and homicides combined. All forms of violence are tragic and many have come to believe that violence is simply part of human nature. But this is not true.
Violence of all kinds can be understood and prevented.
“Violence thrives in the absence of democracy, respect for human rights and good governance,”
said Nelson Mandela. We often talk about how a “culture of violence” can take root. This is indeed true – as a South African who lived through apartheid and lives through its aftermath, I have seen and experienced it. No country, no city, no community is immune. But we are not powerless against it either.”
As we approach another presidential election in the United States, everyone is aware of the threat to democracy we face and the conflicts that are tearing our country apart.
In Part 4, I offered guidance for all those who are ready to see the truth about the times we live in and how we can live, love and work for good in the world.
For most of my professional life I believed that treating depression and preventing suicide involved helping individuals, couples and families. A new perspective opened up for me in 1993 at a men’s leadership conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ve written a number of articles about my experience over the years, including the most recent, “Transformations: The End of the US and the World as We Know It and the Truth About Our Collective Future.”
I said that an old kind of masculinity was on the way out. My colleague Riane Eisler describes two competing systems that humans engage in that she calls the dominance system and the cooperation system. All over the world emotionally traumatized men who rise to power have chosen a dominant approach to claim power.
The old authoritarian systems were run by fearful men who believed that the only way to survive was to rule by force. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes these men in her book, Strong: Mussolini to date. He says,
“For our age is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who avoid accountability while robbing their people of the truth, treasure and protections of democracy.”
Among the seventeen protagonists of her book are: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how modern authoritarians support each other in her book, Autocracy Inc.: Dictators who want to rule the world.
“Today, autocracies rely on sophisticated networks made up of multiple regimes… Authoritarians are rewriting the rules of global trade and governance as their propagandists feed them the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.”
At MenAlive I support men and their families to embrace the partnership system and recently created a way for organizations and individuals to believe in these ideas and practices to stay connected. You can find out more on our website, MoonshotforMankind.org and get news you can use on our substack, substack.com/@moonshotformankind.
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Every suicide is a tragedy that affects families, communities and entire countries and has long-lasting effects on the people left behind.
Suicide does not only occur in high-income countries, but is a global phenomenon in all regions of the world. In fact, nearly three-quarters (73%) of global suicides occurred in low- and middle-income countries in 2021.
