Middle age is reportedly the happiest time of life for most Americans. So, why are middle-aged men at such high risk for suicide?
I belong to a group that has an unusually high rate of dying by suicide. No, I don’t belong to a cell of terrorists in training. I’m not a soldier or veteran with multiple deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m not a prison or jail inmate. And I’m not a doctor (physicians have easy access to drugs and understand their lethality). What high-risk group do I belong to? I am a middle-aged white man.
Men have long had higher rates of suicide than women, and whites in the United States are more likely to kill themselves than are African, Hispanic, or Asian Americans. But it’s only in recent years that the middle-aged have overtaken older people as the ones most likely to die by suicide.
In 2007 (the latest year for which statistics are available), people aged forty-five to fifty-four had the highest suicide rate of any age group: 17.7 per 100,000. (The national average was 11.5 per 100,000.) And the rate for fifty-five to sixty-four-year-olds showed the greatest increase from the previous year.
Researchers don’t yet know why midlifers are becoming more vulnerable to suicide, especially since studies have found that middle age is generally the happiest time of life for most Americans. As a forty-five-year-old white guy, I was curious to know what makes my demographic group so self-destructive. After talking with experts, here’s what I learned.
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“Women seek help—men die.” This quote from a 1990 medical journal article is an overgeneralization, of course. There are plenty of women who don’t seek help for their emotional distress. After all, women in the United States are three times more likely to attempt suicide than men. But “men tend to hold their own counsel,” says psychiatrist Yeates Conwell, co-director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide at the University of Rochester. “They often don’t build supportive networks that allow them to share their concerns with others.”
Men are also more likely to drink heavily when feeling distraught, and to reach for guns in order to kill themselves. Nearly sixty percent of suicides among males occur by firearms, while the most common method among women is overdose/poisoning. Guns tend to be more lethal than pills, and this helps explain why there are four male suicides for every female suicide. (Some ninety percent of all people who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental illness or substance use disorder.)
There’s even evidence that men are more likely than women to feel there is a stigma attached to a “failed” suicide attempt. So men may use more lethal methods to avoid being seen as unmanly—even as they’re planning their own death.
Changes in gender roles may also be affecting men, suggests Sally Spencer-Thomas, executive director of the Colorado-based Carson J Spencer Foundation, whose Working Minds program promotes suicide prevention in the workplace. As more women become family breadwinners and attain leadership positions once denied them, Spencer-Thomas says that “more men are asking themselves, ‘Am I a provider or not? Am I a leader or not?’ Their sense of purpose may become unclear.”
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Whites could use a little faith. Whites are more than twice as likely to die by suicide as blacks, although whites in general are better off economically. In fact, the suicide rate for white men aged forty-five to fifty-four (29.3 per 100,000) is 14 times greater than the rate for black women of the same age (2.1 per 100,000). Some researchers suggest that blacks may be less prone to suicide because they are more religious. They tend to outpace whites in the United States on measures such as frequency of church attendance and prayer, closeness to God, and self-ratings of spirituality. Being part of a church community can also be a powerful source of social support, another protective factor.
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Midlife can be a minefield. For many people, the peak earning years of midlife offer a sense of competence and mastery. But for others, the middle years may be times of disillusionment and regret about stalled careers and stale marriages. This time of life can also be filled with anxieties about mounting debt, while putting kids through school and caring for aging parents. Plus, men at midlife discover that their own bodies aren’t what they used to be. As natural medicine expert Andrew Weil, M.D., writes, “The man at fifty or sixty looks at his sagging muscles, thinning hairline, bigger belly, and uncooperative penis and wonders, ‘Whose body is this?’”
But these challenges aren’t new to midlife. What could account for the rising suicide rates? (Remember, the latest statistics are for 2007, before the economic meltdown of 2008 brought widespread job cuts and home foreclosures.) Dr. Conwell says that even before the recession, concerns about the stability of employment could have set the stage for other factors—such as substance misuse, more difficult access to health care, and less-stable social support—that can increase the risk of suicide.
Sally Spencer-Thomas also suspects that fraying social ties may play a role. She notes a 2006 study showing that Americans’ circle of confidants shrank by one-third in the previous two decades. And the number of people who said they have no one with whom to discuss important matters more than doubled in that time, to nearly twenty-five percent.
Thomas Joiner, a psychologist at Florida State University and author of Myths about Suicide (2010), speculates that the mainstreaming of gore may even be having an effect. When the people now in their mid-40s were in their teens (from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s), they were starting to get exposed to gory movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th. He believes that one of the most important factors that contributes to suicide is a “learned fearlessness” about physical pain, physical injury, and death. (Other factors, he says, include the idea that you are a burden on other people, and the feeling that you are hopelessly alienated from them.) As people develop an increasing tolerance to gore, perhaps they are more likely—when in extreme distress—to do themselves harm.
“I hope that I’m wrong about this,” says Joiner. “If it’s true, that’s ominous.” Children and teens today are exposed to far more graphic violence in movies and computer games than were their counterparts of thirty years ago.
Other theories about why midlife suicide rates are on the rise include easier access to guns and prescription drugs, and a potentially higher incidence of depression among baby boomers.
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Lowering risk. When I asked these experts for practical advice on what middle-aged white men can do to reduce their risk of suicide, they stressed that you should see your doctor if you suspect you’re suffering from depression or another mental health problem. While depression often includes feeling sad or losing interest in things that typically give you pleasure, it can also be expressed in other ways: sleep problems, frequent headaches or stomach pain, risk taking (such as reckless driving and casual sex), and anger. If you are suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The experts also advise all men to develop support networks, and to stay engaged with family and friends. “Do everything you can to resist the urge to isolate,” says Phillip Smith, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Rochester. Reaching out can feel uncomfortable, he admits. But sharing your worries can make you feel less alone, and other people may offer valuable perspectives on what you’re going through.
Dr. Conwell also encourages men to take good care of themselves. That means eating right, being physically active, managing your stress levels, getting enough sleep, and not drinking too much alcohol.
And don’t forget to look out for each other, says Spencer-Thomas. Notice if a family member, friend, or co-worker doesn’t seem himself, and ask him how he’s doing. Remind him that depression is a treatable medical condition, not a sign of weakness. If he’s talking about death and suicide, and you suspect that he might harm himself, offer to take him to the emergency room or call 911.
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A personal perspective. I am no stranger to depression, as it has affected me to varying degrees since my teens. It took me a long time to get help—first from psychotherapy, then medication, and now both. The idea of suicide once had a seductive pull on me, but it has lost its power.
Although suicide used to seem like a way out of my struggles, now I can see more options to get through them. I’ve also met several people who have lost loved ones to suicide, and now I firmly believe that any option is better than killing myself.
These survivors of suicide loss have been through a veritable hell of grief and guilt (“What could I have done to prevent this?”). If you ever get to the point that you think you’ll be doing others a favor by doing yourself in, you are wrong.
To me, the essence of suicidal thinking is a kind of tunnel vision in which self-annihilation seems like the only solution to emotional pain. Perhaps this is why I’ve found comfort in environments that provide a sense of spaciousness and openness. Sitting beneath the vaulted ceiling of my church, or walking though the woods and coming upon a sunlit clearing, seems to take me out of my head and my concerns.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl describes a moment not long after he had been liberated from a Nazi concentration camp. He is walking through the countryside past flowering meadows. Larks rise to the sky and sing joyously. He stops, looks around, and then drops to his knees. Frankl, an Austrian Jew, repeats to himself a line from Psalm 118: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”
I think it’s possible for anyone to experience this freedom of space, regardless of religious affiliation or spiritual beliefs. And I share Frankl’s sense of gratitude. I find myself released from many of the constraints that depression once placed on me and from the lure of suicidal thoughts, and I can see possibilities all around me.
—Dan Fields
Thanks to Elana Premack Sandler at the Suicide Prevention Resource Center for help with statistics.
About Dan Fields
Dan thanks for this important piece.
I think one reason blacks are less prone to suicide is due our being more used to financial and other problems in life, so when things turn bad, we’re less likely to go postal or sweat the difficulties.
I too am at 45, but I would wonder about depression being the only angle out there. I and lotsa guys I know are adrift. In the middle of careers that are ‘meh’ That we may only have to support our families…
What percentage of these guys are divorced? I can think of nothing greater for alienation than divorce. Alienated from your kids, and chained to the job you have, to continue providing for them, while an ex may not be pulling the weight?
How about guys for whom their work is not seen by their family as being their ‘life’s work’ rather than a way to pay for family bills. The career that they have may no longer be seen as a value to itself, and that is pretty disheartening when you spend so much of your life doing it.
As for social structures, men who go through changes in their midlife are often cut off from these, because the groups are kinda exclusive. Most of my friends are still there, but their wive treat me as radioactive becasue I’m divorced. [What if their husband got any ideas?] Sadly I belong to a brotherhood of divorced guys who mostly share negatives in their lives, and commiseration.
I’d have to wonder about the stats on that. There are a lot of middle aged guys alieneated like that. WHY are they drinking? WHY do the feel friendless? Where is their own family in all this?
I’m outside the age group, at 59, but I feel the legitimacy in D’s questions. I am divorced, with children who do not speak to me, still in the same job that (in my opinion) cut me off from my family, while I had to keep the job to support the family. Drinking? You bet. It makes up the bulk of my evenings as I count down toward a retirement I know I can’t take. I don’t intend this to sound like whining, only to validate what D says about the “brotherhood of divorced guys”.
Great article – thank you. There are support structures available for men through men’s groups in many parts of the country. (contact a local ManKind Project community to learn more). A men’s group can be a place to break the pattern of isolation and shame that goes along with serious depression. It is also a place to learn more effective ways of handling nearly any aspect of your life – without shame, men trying to ‘fix’ one another or the kind of victim mentality that sometimes goes with ‘support’ groups.
D – I suspect that the answer to the why has to do with two things … inability to take full responsibility for feelings and actions (and their impacts) and inability or unwillingness to tell the truth about what is going on. In my experience in 7 years of facilitating men’s circles, I have seen many many men desperately afraid to tell the truth about what is going on in their lives without sugar-coating, ‘tough it out’ attitudes or half-truths.
The truth – as ugly as it may seem – will set us free.
D great comment. Of course that is at the root of what we are doing here at The Good Men Project, breaking down the barriers which make us as men, many of whom are struggling for all the reasons you mention, suffer in silence and alone so we can realize that we are all so much more alike than we know.
Boy, I can so empathize with those guys. Middle aged? Check. Depressed? Check. Divorced? Check. Kids don’t live with me? Check.
I don’t really know what keeps me going, one week to the next.
This is a very important issue for men and the women who love them. As a therapist who has specialized in treating men, I know how devastating it can be when men lose hope and turn to suicide. As a man who has dealt with depression throughout my life and had a father who tried to commit suicide when I was 5, I know first hand how difficult these problems can be.
I completed a major research project on the differences between male and female depression. I’ve published it as a book: Male vs Female Depression: Why Men Act Out and Women Act In. I would be glad to share with anyone who is interested. You can contact me at Jed@MenAlive.com and put “depression study” in the subject line.
I believe newer statistics will show this trend accelerating as the economy decelerates, It is extremely hard to hold one’s head above water even if you do have support because the root causes (economic, mental, disenfranchisement, divorce and emotional distancing, not to mention depression) still exist. If you are divorced and living for the kids, and they start the distancing that is appropriate in their development (especially painful if you can’t provide for them as you had in the past) what do you have left?
Thanks for your feedback, everyone. Since writing the article, I’ll learned of a good article on men and depression at http://www.familyaware.org/when-depressed-husbands-refuse-help.html. Check it out!
Great article Dan. Victor Frankl’s book is one of the most important I’ve read in helping me come to terms with my own father’s suicide, when he was 60.
I’m a documentary photographer and working on a project telling the stories of those left behind when somebody they love dies by suicide.
It can be viewed here: http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/07/kerry-payne-left-behind/
I’m privileged to be working in conjunction with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on this project — http://www.afsp.org — where there are some excellent resources for those at risk and support recommendations for anybody who might also be surviving a loss by suicide.
Regards,
Kerry Payne
Photographer
Thanks for this article. I too, am no stranger to depression. It has battered me, and other family members for decades. My younger sister committed suicide nearly 25 yrs ago now, so I KNOW that suicide is NOT an answer when seeking to rid oneself of emotional pain. All suicide does is spread that pain around!
I have never had psychotherapy, but have been on medication for years. For the past 5 yrs I have been so physically ill, that it has disabled me. The line above “(Other factors, he says, include the idea that you are a burden on other people, and the feeling that you are hopelessly alienated from them.)” really jumped out at me. I struggled with the same ‘lure’ of suicide then too, but God has been with me, and I lean on Him. What role do you think genetics plays in suicide? and BTW, I am a 51y/o white woman, married 20+ yrs, and soon to be an empty nester. Could I have passed this on to my own children? Our daughter seems fine, but I ‘recognize’ behaviors in our son. Thanks~TK
Excellent article -
My 17 year old son died by suicide 2 years ago, and my husband is 50, and we stay diligent to the grief that comsumes us at times. Overwhelming white males kill themselves more than any other group – to me that is the much larger issue – why.
I live with the why’s, and the what if’s, and all the rest. As a writer I write extensively about it, and the struggle we face as survivor’s.
Peace,
Wow! That was a very powerful article. Thank you for sharing. I passed this along to my husband because we are going through some difficult times right now.
Terre, thanks for your question about the role of genetics in suicide. Thomas Joiner discusses this topic in his book Myths about Suicide. I don’t have the book at hand; I think he says that genetics does play a role, but is only one of many factors that may affect suicide risk. Biology is not destiny. Best wishes to you and your family!
I lost a brother to suicide in 2007. He was 37 and facing many of the same issues described here. Alcoholism, depression, unemployed, divorced and living alone. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Having struggled with depression since college, I can relate to the issues as well. I think middle aged men sense that their life is going nowhere, or not where they that it would be, and can’t see the point of going on. I feel sure my late brother felt that way. The survivors are left with the “why” and “what could I have done” issues. I read a book called “Grieving a Suicide” by Albert Y. Hsu that helped with many of the issues.
Wow, what an insightful article..I am a divorced, white 49 year old..almost empty nester. I too suffer from depression, living alone, feeling isolated, disconnected, of no value…etc. I never thought about it from a mans prespective..having those same issues. This has given me a new prespective on what men go through…seems like they are so much stronger emotionaly than I am. Perhaps I have been totaly wrong, it would appear they have some of the same issues…thanks for the new understanding!
My 1st husband killed himself when he was 44 years old. He was disconnected from family, even me and our kids, always found a way to tell himself he didn’t have anything in common with any men in our church, circle of friends, etc. His career had totally stalled b/c he let it, not b/c he was fired or laid -off. After his death, his friends from HS and college told me that he had always flirted with the idea of suicide when he was younger. He had the same symptoms as the men mentioned in the article, but I believe he was depressed first and then the life situations followed. What of the theory I read about several years ago that said there might be a physical or chemical difference in the brain structures of those who complete suicide and those who try several times but never succeed? He drove to an isolated area and ran a hose from the tailpipe into the car and died of CO2 poisoning. Thanks for the article.
I believe that the foundation of this problem is the fact that we have an antiquated paradigm of masculinity. Our challenge as men is to recognize how we are socially conditioned to disconnect from our emotions at a very early age which I believe sets the stage for a lot of our pain and suffering. The key is to gain the courage to seek out support and realize that we are not alone and there are support systems out there that can support and nurture us to wholeness. The challenge is to gain the courage to get help.
I too struggled with depression and know very well the pain and devastation it causes. Fortunately for me I gained the courage to seek help which helped me heal my heart and become whole again.
It takes articles like this to help men recognize that we are not alone and we can become genuinely happy with our lives but we must be willing to take the first step.
I would like to suggest a resource for anyone who may be struggling with depression or simply struggling with the challenges of being a man. It’s called A New Conversation With Men and it is my latest book that has been empowering men around the globe to redefine masculinity and embrace new ways of being men in today’s ever changing world.
My website is also filled with free resources to assist men in discovering who they really are.
http://www.coachmichaeltaylor.com
The time has come for a new male revolution and we must support and empower each other to reach our fullest potential.
Vacume. That’s what I call it. My life was torn away on September 18, 1990 by a telephone conference call that took away my children. This many years later they all hate my guts as if I were the devil himself. Tell me, what is life for? As one other commenter stated above, “I don’t know what keeps me going from week to week.” I can relate. I have grandchildren I have never seen. I don’t know their names. I know what it is to be reduced to nothing but a sperm bank and a paycheck, only to be cast aside like a worn out old shoe. I know what slavery is: to be reduced to nothing but a physical/economic entity with no inherent value/soul. I’m 55. So what? When does life start? How many time can I start over. I keep going by faith that God has heard my prayers and will answer me someday. I sing. I do things. I go to my men’s group. I do my best to take care of the wife God gave me in my middle age. I just worked out and took a walk to clear my head. I have a 1/2 bathroom to install. It’s like I throw an anchor in front of myself and then I pull myself toward it. But nothing takes away the vacume forever, the hole in my soul that remains after all of these years. I have some pictures I will send to my sons. Perhaps they will get curious about Dad. Who knows?
Yes, I also have a scar on my left wrist, at the right spot. circa 1991 when I came home from the Gulf war and my children weren’t there to greet me. And I also almost successfully used a firearm in 1999. Some good people saved my life on that aweful day.
‘Tis Grace has brought me safe thus far, and Grace will lead me home’
I struggle with my faith. My struggle has been rewarded with life. However, much pain remains. To be totally honest, the pain and the vacume are overwhelming at times.
I raise my Ebenezer: thus far the LORD has helped me.
Sincerely,
Ed
I didn’t read anything here about believing God has a plan and a reason things happen. If you commit suicide you have let Satan win. I have considered it multiple times in the past until I came to this realization and am too big of a hard head to let him win. Life is full of heart ache and challenges and the main thing is to rise to the occasion. It’s a hard thing to do, but it pays off in the end.
I was married for 32 years, my only child died from an undiagnosed illness at the age of 15, my husband got hurt at work in 1982 and I put him through college to become a nurse and when my child died in 1995, he had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t work in that field again. I have been working for the last 16 years, have no money, no insurance, no home that I own(we had to sell that to pay medical bills), and I STILL BELIEVE THERE IS A PLAN! I will keep putting one foot in from of the other until God decides differently.