@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io was posting about black men and suicides, saying:
Black men have one of the lowest age adjusted suicide rates.👍🏿 White men? One of the highest. … Self imposed masculinity pressure isn't the only reason so many men are depressed. But it's a big one.
It reminded me of some numbers for Switzerland I had seen some time ago. After reading Mekka's thread, I tried to find those numbers again, and I was not disappointed. It's bad.
Here's the suicide rate by gender in Switzerland. My take is that men here are often lonely, the emotional labour of maintaining relationships often falls on the shoulders of women so when men are alone, they are often unable to build the kind of network required to stay well. And thus, where as the suicide rates are going down, men are still doing worse than women.
These numbers are without assisted suicides, in case you are wondering. At the same time, the federal system in Switzerland means that healthcare and police are the responsibility of the cantons. Standards differ, reporting differs. It's a mess. I assume this means that there is an extremely high uncertainty about these numbers. As I assume that the suicides reported must be pretty obvious, I suspect that the actual numbers are much higher. It seems unlikely, however, that standards and reporting would differ by gender, so I'm going to assume that the relation between suicide rates remain valid even if the actual numbers are higher.
A graph showing the peak in 1980 with suicides of about 14 women and 37 men per 100000 inhabitants and a new low in 2020 with about 5 women and 14 men per 100000 inhabitants.
Suizidrate nach Geschlecht - Todesfälle durch Suizid pro 100 000 Einwohner/innen
Suizidrate nach Geschlecht - Todesfälle durch Suizid pro 100 000 Einwohner/innen
As people grow older, suicide rates go up. The graph below is again without assisted suicides (which are legal in Switzerland).
Making friends and maintaining relationships requires emotional labour, trust, openness, vulnerability, and it can be hard. I know it's hard for me and unfortunately I see myself in these statistics. We must learn to do better.
Patriarchy is not helping.
Suicide rate for women starts at around 5 per 100000 inhabitants in teenage years and goes up to around 10 per 100000. For men, however, it starts at around 10 per 100000 and goes up to 60 per 100000 when they are about 80 years old.
Spezifische Todesursachen: Häufigste Todesursachen nach Alter und Geschlecht; vorzeitige Sterblichkeit und verlorene potenzielle Lebensjahre
​#Suicide ​#Switzerland
