Interpretations Of Suicide

Journal Article Review:

Young People’s Gendered Interpretations of Suicide and

Attempted Suicide

Adam C. Green

Central Washington University

Reference

Scourfield, J., Jacob, N., Smalley, N., Prior, L., & Greenland, K. (2007). Young people's gendered interpretations of suicide and attempted suicide. Child & Family Social Work, 12(3), 248-257. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2007.00498.x

Summary

This article focuses on how adolescents and young adults view the differences between male and female suicides and suicide attempts. The authors point out that suicide rates among young men have been increasing at an alarming rate in the latter half of the 20th century. The suicide rate for young men is much higher than for young women, while non-fatal

The concept of the male suicide was mentioned as an “easy way out”, but at the same time was still considered to require “strength”. This oxymoron was a major focus for the authors as they tried to make sense of those conflicting notions. They speculated that Western culture has concluded that the male suicide is a ‘lashing out’ towards external pressures like economic status and relationship status. One participant ‘Rob’ stated that men would rather kill themselves than suffer the shame of asking for help. The authors linked this to the concept of ‘honour’ (they are British), where a man who talks about his feelings and seeks help is ‘weak’ and a ‘failure’ when men must be ‘strong’ and ‘successful’. An additional effect of this hyper-aversion to expression and vulnerability is that if a man attempts suicide and lives through it, they are treated with less sympathy than a woman in the same scenario. Men were also expected by participants to be more impulsive and decisive and therefore more likely to commit suicide after a short amount of time and with low rate of

The use of the vignettes clearly was not helpful in that they dictated the discussion to a certain degree, thus biasing the results even further. The questioning also ‘led’ the participants by highlighting gender differences, increasing the potential social desirability bias. In this authors opinion the study was poorly constructed but described a very socially relevant topic.

That being said, there are some frightening concepts being discussed and implied by the participant statements. This author finds the idea of killing oneself being preferable to showing ‘weakness’ and getting help to be an incredible condemnation of our societal views of ‘masculinity’. The obvious implication is that men have to be self-contained, detached, and invincible or else they are of no worth; they are not ‘real men’. This author has had suicidal thoughts during adolescence but never came particularly close to attempting suicide, and eventually got help and after years of trying to improve has finally experienced hope for the future. This article would say that the getting of help and the inability to commit suicide is not ‘masculine’ according to society. This author desperately wants to believe that young men should not kill themselves and that society will realize that men who would rather kill themselves than