#I WANT TO KILL MYSELF PROFESSIONAL#

“But when you look more into contemporary epidemiological research, the numbers start to look a little different.” “Historically these numbers have been bandied about – that women have twice the rate of depression, but men have higher rates of suicide,” he says. He also questions the commonly held belief that women are more likely to suffer from mental illness than men are. “If a guy says, well my sense of being a man means that I can’t disclose any vulnerabilities, because that will make me look weak, if something does come up, what do I do with that? I have to keep it to myself,” says John Oliffe, founder and lead investigator of the Men’s Health Research program at UBC. Studies show that in the year before they killed themselves, only 35 percent of men saw a mental-health practitioner, while 58 percent of women did.

#I WANT TO KILL MYSELF PROFESSIONAL#

That can result in their feelings building up without an escape valve – either a personal one, through talking with friends and family, or a professional one, through therapy or other mental health services – and can escalate to a crisis point. There’s evidence that men who adhere more strongly to masculine ideals see getting psychological help more negatively. So what distinguishes those who do from those who don’t? But not everyone with mental illness kills themselves. “Ninety percent of people who die by suicide are experiencing some sort of mental illness or addiction, most often depression,” says Ed Mantler, vice president of programs and priorities at the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Having mental health issues is a major predictor for suicide – almost everyone who dies from suicide has an underlying mental health problem. Is masculinity getting in the way of getting help? Or it might be that, as some researchers have suggested, they’re choosing more extreme methods because they’re more suicidal in the first place. These differences might be because men are more comfortable with guns. Men are more likely to use firearms and other deadly methods, while women are more likely to use pills. That’s mainly due to two things: “One is that men use more lethal means, and the second is that they don’t seek care as much,” says Simon Hatcher, vice-chair of research for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. That’s a pattern that holds true across Canada, and in most of the rest of the world as well. Women are actually more likely to try to kill themselves – three to four times more likely. Many of these are partially funded by the Movember Foundation, a men’s health organization, which has highlighted male suicide as one of its key areas of investment. That’s starting to happen, with websites like HeadsUpMen and groups like Men’s Sheds, which offer a space and tools where men can gather to work on projects and make connections. That’s why many argue that suicide prevention programs should recognize that men are a high risk group and tailor messaging and programming to them. Three times as many Canadian men kill themselves every year than women do – in Ontario, that means more men are dying from suicide than from car accidents. Suicide is often thought of as a gender-neutral issue, but in reality, it’s a problem that affects men far more than women. You hear the same story, and it’s my story too.” “We have 11 story videos and a whole bunch of blogs on the site, and basically every time it’s they didn’t talk about their emotions with anybody, they wanted to figure it out on their own.

that I probably never asked for help because of those male stereotypes,” he says. “Before, I never even thought of mental health in terms of what it means to be a man.

The experience has changed his perspective on why he didn’t feel comfortable asking for professional help earlier. He now works for HeadsUpGuys, a website based out of the University of British Columbia that focuses on men and mental illness. “It was only when I was obviously really sick and ill that I reached out, because I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“I basically never talked about my emotions with anybody I felt like I wanted to figure things out on my own,” he says. But he wonders what would have happened if he’d reached out for help earlier, before his depression worsened. Adrenaline and instinct led him to swim to a nearby platform, where he was soon picked up by emergency services – his brother had received his text and called 911. “I had lost all sight of ever getting better, and of anything enjoyable I’d ever done,” he says.ĭespite breaking six ribs and puncturing a lung, he woke up in the water. He had been severely depressed for months, and the counselling that he was receiving and medication he was on wasn’t helping much. Five years ago, Josh was standing on a bridge, texting his brother a good-bye message.

I want to kill myself