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
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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 …show more content…
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
Suicide displays wide variation in race, gender, religion, and socioeconomic lines. Males are three to four times more likely to commit suicide than females (Moore, Recker, & Heirigs, 2014). By studying suicide and their triggers we can isolate issues in society and address them accordingly. That is a reason we need to know which changes are making more impact on individuals the rapid or slow ones and how they are affecting individuals’ acceptance within their groups?, Is technology advancement part of the problem? How is society facing suicides and what has been done to slow down the suicides rates? Which could be the lowest level where we can teach about reasons to commit suicide? By answering these questions I believe that more data can be collected to understand reason individuals commit suicide and society is deal with the
Kolves, K. McPhedran, S. ‘Reducing access to the means of suicide’, The Conversation, viewed 13 February 2014
This chapter, titled Suicide discusses the deviant activity of suicide. Author John Curra is a professor at Eastern Kentucky University where he teaches courses in social deviance, criminology, sociological analysis amongst more, and has authored several texts. Through the chapter, Curra defines and discusses the various forms of suicide that have been used throughout history, such as obligatory suicide, euthanasia and suicidal bombing. He also explains how these forms have adapted over time and their impact on society as well as how the act of suicide is and has been dealt with across different cultures. Curra clearly shows through this chapter to vast differences in how society reacts to and accepts suicide
In a study released by Brown University, their psychology department shed some light on common myths and facts surrounded suicide. These m...
A 17 year old boy, Douglas Stewart, came home from school to find his mother lying on the sofa with a strained back. Being concerned for her he rubbed her back briefly then put on some easy listening music. Douglas then proceeded downstairs to his bedroom. Two of his friends came to the door. His mother waited to see if he would return to answer it; minutes later she answered and then yelled for him to come up. When he did not come, she went downstairs to get him. That is when she found him strangled and her son’s body dangling from the ceiling. This is a senseless tragic sight for a mother to endure. The mortality rate from suicide in 1996 showed 9.5 per 100,000 for 15-19 year olds. This also shows boys are four times more likely to commit suicide then girls. However, girls are twice as likely to attempt suicide. (American 1996) It is imperative to reverse this trend and in doing so we need to understand the characteristics, behaviors and events associated with youth suicide.
Suicide is one of the youth’s ways out of their problems, not only in the United States but the world. What does drive teens to suicidal thoughts and actions? What are the ways communities help prevent teenage suicide? Perhaps there are signs can be pointed out that would indicate a problem. In two surveys in 1996, both reported in the Journal of Adolescent Health, both also asked relatively the same questions of the violent actions that some people may see in life’. Surprisingly, the numbers for many of the questions were the same, such as teens who witnessed a shooting first hand; they both were about 37% (Pastore, Fisher, and Friedman 321-2). Using information such as this, one cannot blame the recent rise in teenage suicide with the violent problems of life, but more along the lines of depression caused by multiple things, for instance body image. According to many researchers, alcohol is many times a solution to a teen’s problem with life and the hardships people face in it. Many people in the United States overlook the major problem of teenage suicide; this is a mistake
So begin the episodes of anguished soul-searching, of horrific "if-onlys" experienced by the family members of countless suicides. Anyone who has faced what Mr. and Mrs. A now grapple with knows that the girl is wrong: they will not be better off, not feel happier, without her. Yet each year, thousands of suicide victims express similar convictions: I am killing myself, they reassure us, for your own good. This thinking – this appeal for selflessness that our society cannot condone – where does it come from? Why, in truth, do people kill themselves?
“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” - Phil Donahue. As a complex, tragic public health issue, suicide occurs in men significantly more often than in women. Suicide is simply defined as the act of intentionally ending one’s own life, but the factors that play into a person making that decision are anything but simple. The most obvious and severe effect of suicide is the loss of a valuable, meaningful human life. According to Harvard School of Public Health (n.d.), suicide affects parents, children, siblings, friends, lovers and spouses; the loss for society is psychological, spiritual, and financial. People who lose a loved one to suicide often experience devastating effects and deal with a complex grief. These “suicide survivors” typically feel a range of emotions from sadness, blame, and guilt to extreme anger and confusion. “Suicide among males is four times higher than among females and represents 79% of all U.S. suicides” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2012). This gender paradox is one of the most compelling components regarding who is most at risk to attempt suicide. Why is it that men commit suicide more often than women? More than four times as many men as women die by suicide because depressed men are less likely to seek out help, men typically use more violent, lethal methods and cannot be resuscitated, and men carry the pressure of employment, providing for and protecting a family, and maintaining relationships.
Suicide in adolescents is the third-leading cause of death in the United States between the ages of 10 though 19 (National Center for Health Statistics, 2012, 292). More adolescents who think even about attempting suicide are mostly the ones who are unsuccessful at it. Females for example, are more likely than males to attempt to commit suicide by either over dosing on sleeping pills or self harming. Most adolescents’ girls will not succeed in actually committing suicide. Males on the other hand, use more drastic ways of committing suicide, adolescent boys usually with a firearm rather than another meth...
Furthermore, past research has shown that self report intruments have yielded clinically significant results. Specifically, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, Suicide Probability Scale and Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior High Version were particularly sensitive in measuring risk factors and predicting suicide attempts over a six month period. Despite the sensitivity of these self report measures, one issue remains. Adolescent males commit suicide 3.6 times more than their female counterpoarts. However, males report having suicidal thoughts and report that they consider commiting suicide less frequently than females do. Therefore, there is an obvious gap between the suicidal thoughts that adolescent males report, and actual suicide attempts. Gender therefore becomes a moderator of the value of self reported suicidal ideation amongst adolescents....
Suicides are a grave display of human discontent with life that is especially disheartening when enacted by youths. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measures the occurrence of suicides in the country using a ratio that expresses the number of suicides per every 100,000 people in the population for which the rate is being reported. According to the CDC, death by suicide amongst younger groups is significantly lower than those of older groups, yet it is the third leading cause of death amongst those ages fifteen to twenty-four. Additionally, CDC has gathered statistics that estimate suicides amongst males are nearly four times higher than females – 19.95 and 5.15 respectively. Certain studies have even shown that urban dwellers are at increased risk of suicide than those in rural areas. In Jeffrey Eugenide’s novel, The Virgin Suicides, he writes about a group of sisters (the Lisbon sisters) who are basically confined to their suburban home by their overly protective and oppressive mother and eventually, following suit of their youngest sister, commit suicide. There are many factors that may have lead up to the group of girls taking their lives such as a lack of sufficient social opportunity due to their mother nearly completely isolating them from the world outside their home or their exposure to the suicidal behavior of their sister, Cecilia. Furthermore, heir suicides could even be due to a mental disorder such as depression and bi-polar disorder, Schizophrenia, conduct disorder, or anxiety, or an unknown past family history of suicide – even though Eugenides didn’t mention it – but the real reason for their suicides are never disclosed. What is left is a group of girls who both follow and challenge the statistical evidence that has been gathered today regarding suicides; that is, they were less likely to take their own life being adolescents
The rates of suicide when focusing on gender differ from region to region, providing conflicting information on whether males or females are more at risk for suicide. Of teenagers aged 15-19 in ______, 9 out of 100,000 kids successfully committed suicide from 2005-2010 (Suicide Attempts)*. LGBT or other sexual minority children and teenagers also are at risk for committing suicide. Approximately 1 in 3 youths that consider themselves part of a sexual minority reported attempting suicide, compared to 1 in 12 heterosexual youths (Intersecting Identities)*. Warning signs of suicide include depression and withdrawal, risky or harmful activities, showing an interest in death or “making comments that things would be better without them” (Teen Bullying & Suicide)*.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. (J. A. Spaulding, & G. Simpson, Trans.)
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year olds, and the sixth leading cause for 5 to 14 year olds. Suicide accounts for twelve percent of the mortality in the adolescent and young adult group. Young males are more common than young woman suicides. These are only children who followed through with the suicide. For every successful suicide there are fifty to one hundred adolescent suicide attempts. In other words, more than five percent of all teenagers tried to commit suicide, and the number is still rising. It is scary to think that four percent of high school students have made a suicide attempt within the previous twelve months. In a small safe town like Avon, in the Avon High School where you and I practically live, you can see the faces of 22 students that have tried to commit suicide. That is enough to fill a classroom.
Now the eighth-leading cause of death overall in the U.S. and the third-leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years, suicide has become the subject of much recent focus. U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, for instance, recently announced his Call to Action to Prevent Suicide, 1999, an initiative intended to increase public awareness, promote intervention strategies, and enhance research. The media, too, has been paying very close attention to the subject of suicide, writing articles and books and running news stories. Suicide among our nation’s youth, a population very vulnerable to self-destructive emotions, has perhaps received the most discussion of late. Maybe this is because teenage suicide seems the most tragic—lives lost before they’ve even started. Yet, while all of this recent focus is good, it’s only the beginning. We cannot continue to lose so many lives unnecessarily.