Suicide

Suicide Rates

More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year. Annually, more Americans die from suicide than homicide, and suicide ranks as the eleventh leading cause of death in the United States. In addition, suicide is the third leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults and the second leading cause of death among college students. On a global level, recent figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that approximately one million suicides occur worldwide annually.

Rates of suicide shift dramatically across several demographic categories including gender. In the United States, for instance, suicide risk is highest among white males, especially males older than 65 years of age. Conversely, for women, the risk of [Page 817]suicide peaks between 45 and 49 years of age and then declines with age. Overall, male suicide deaths are four times greater than those of females. A high incidence of suicide is observed in Native American and gay youth. In the United States, firearms are the most common method of both young and older male suicides, but females tend to use less lethal and aggressive methods.

Suicide scholars emphasize that official suicide rates in the United States generally underestimate the true rate of suicide by as much as 30 percent. It has been suggested that the likelihood of suicide death being misclassified is greater for female than for male suicides because of societal attitudes about femininity and suicide. For example, female suicides are more likely to be misclassified as accidental because of greater ambiguity of suicidal intent associated with less immediately lethal methods exhibited by females such as drug overdoses and poisoning. Furthermore, studies find that social attitudes toward female suicide are more negative such that female suicide is rated as more wrong, foolish, and weak than is male suicide. Women's suicides are also more likely to be attributed to familial problems, so family members might be more motivated to hide a female relative's suicide, whereas men's suicide is deemed a response to social conditions outside of the family such as economic opportunity and rapid social change.

Gender Paradox

Although no official U.S. data are collected, it is estimated that 810,000 suicide attempts occur every year. Here, suicide patterns shift significantly by gender with female attempts outnumbering male attempts by a rate of 3 to 1. Suicide researchers refer to this as the gender paradox, whereby females are more likely to attempt suicide but males are more likely to complete suicide. According to suicidolo-gists, this pattern holds true for most Western countries and is not an artifact of biased data collection. Feminist suicide researchers argue that the association of nonfatal suicidal behaviors with the social construction of gender, particularly femininity, may contribute to the gender gap observed in suicide attempts. For example, this association may inhibit nonfatal suicide behavior in males because of stigma connected to males engaging in nonfatal suicidality perceived as exhibiting feminine gender traits. Similarly, the gender system may encourage nonfatal suicidality in females because of the association of these behaviors with femininity. However, the gender gap between completed and attempted suicides narrows significantly in cultures outside the United States, and in some locations, ethnic, religious, and minority groups within the United States. This narrowing gap might be partly explained by culturally dominant or hegemonic (i.e., white, middle- and upper-class, heterosexual) expressions of femininity and masculinity being inaccessible to members of nondominant, minority groups. In Western biomédical culture, major depression is the single greatest predictor of suicide. It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of individuals suffering from depression will ultimately commit suicide. In addition, high depression and low suicide rates exhibited by females in contrast with low depression and high suicide rates in males represents another contradictory wrinkle related to gender in suicide patterns.

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