99 Comments

The most important & serious issue men are facing, which they continuously say no one cares abt, no ones helping or listening, had a chance to talk abt it & help each other here...instead they talked abt women & feminisn, as always.

They mentioned: women 18 times, feminism 15, misandry 7, gynocentric 2.

This happens EVERY TIME this subject is brought up on every social media platform. It's showing the world how many men don't care abt it & just use it as a beneficial anti feminism/woman talking point.

Expand full comment

The largest suicide demographic is White men, which account for about 75% of US suicides.

Expand full comment

I have been working on the male suicide issue for some time, As a therapist I have worked with moms and dads who experienced the death of their child. It was clear as a bell that neighbors, co-workers, relatives and friends would all flock to the mom and offer support. But what did the dad get? Not much. People would come to him and say "How is your wife holding up?" It woke me up. Here's a link to a video on male suicide that is part one in a two part series. Much of this was also included in the Maryland Commission for Men's Health report on male suicide. it is a huge problem and very few seem to care.

https://menaregood.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-male-suicide

Expand full comment

The biggest risk factor in attempted suicide is being female.

Expand full comment

The biggest risk factor in COMPLETED suicide is being male. Those that attempt suicide, live. Those that complete suicide, die. Big difference

Expand full comment

Mental illness is a plague upon the USA and yet you can only get help if you have health insurance, and even then, most insurances aren't covering most kinds of therapy. The government, and even some citizens, have no problem with most of our tax dollars going to the military and all its adventures, but god forbid a single dime goes toward health care. I don't know what's wrong with this country.

Expand full comment

Just ran the numbers (from 2021- I can find more recent, but that’s what I already had formatted), and the relationship is interesting. (Assertions of traditional) Masculinity seems to be protective against depression among young men, but the effect fades dramatically as men get older. Certainly lots of controls I’d want to introduce, but there’s something there. Happy to send over the xtabs if you’re interested.

It would be interesting to look at the relationship between how men view their own masculinity, their ideal of masculinity, and depression,

Expand full comment

Richard - Thank you for highlighting this disparity. I'm also wondering whether the US hyperfocus on identity politics may have resulted in limited exploration of the relationship between income and suicide. In my work on inequality, Social Security and aging, I found a clear relationship between life expectancy and income, eg. Here are a few studies I just pulled off the web:

Socioeconomic factors associated with suicidal behaviors in South Korea: systematic review on the current state of evidence https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-12498-1

Relative Status and Well-Being: Evidence from U.S. Suicide Deaths https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/wp12-16bk.pdf

Study: Higher Poverty Tied to Increased Youth Suicide Risk https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-01-27/higher-poverty-tied-to-increased-youth-suicide-risk-study-shows

Financial strains significantly raise risk of suicide attempts https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-financial-strains-significantly-suicide.html

Karl Polzer Center on Capital & Social Equity www.inequalityink.org

Expand full comment

Hi Richard. Very frustrating. Who should we email at the CDC about this? Just so frustrating that they do all this good research and then fail to highlight the most glaringly obvious risk-factor for suicide.

Expand full comment

Just spent 10 mins on the CDC website and it's a maze there. But would be good if somebody with clout could email media@cdc.gov and make the point that gender does matter. Yes, women report more suicidal ideation than men but men committ suicide 4 times more than women. Therefore being male is a big risk factor.

Expand full comment

While emailing the CDC to complain is certainly a good idea, it must be kept in mind that they it is an administrative body that follows the dictates of Congress, and the present gynocentric administration.

Expand full comment

I find it deeply disturbing that whomever is running our current administration is radically feminist. Just read the White House 'National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality'. Openly gynocentric and thinly veiled misandrist. Personally, I've heard no protest about this from our political leaders or national Mens rights organizations. That doesn't mean they may be working behind the scenes or silenced by the media. The exception would be Senator Marco Rubio. Thanks for another great article.

Expand full comment

As the mom to 2 sons with suicidal ideation and one of them has had to be physically restrainted from hurting himself here is my n=2 observations

- bullying by other boys has done more to destroy my sons' mental health than anything else

- both of them have a "pro-dromal" stage where they signal a meltdown is coming

Learning the above truths took YEARS. That is ridiculous.

Yes we need more data and research. I worry desperately about my brother, my husband and my friend's hushands and I want interventions that help.

But...I also want individual men to understand when they yell and melt down and act out...when they blow their stack at their kids...that is NOT NORMAL, they need to one by one...take responsibility and get themselves the help they need.

The answers are on the inside. If my sons can do the work and look as middle schoolers and high schoolers...so can grown a$$ men.

Expand full comment

He who has a why can bare any how; bullying is hardly new, the suicide rate among boys and young men is; clearly something a bit more substantial than mere adversity is at the root of this problem. Suicide is existential, not circumstantial.

Expand full comment

I respectfully disagree.

The amount, rate, invasiveness and ubiquity of the bullying seems new.

I think that the suicide rate is not though. Men have always died earlier than women. A lot of it seems, like we are getting better at measuring it.

Also..."mere adversity" seems...judgemental

Hearing ' die faggot scum' and then laughter while your teachers stand by... as an 11 year old... is more than 'mere adversity '

But it may be to you. And that is okay, but it is not okay to dismiss my sons' bullying trauma as 'mere adversity ' when I have plainly said it is not. It is a contributing factor, as reported by them, in their suicidality.

If we want to solve this problem...we need to listen to, and believe, what boys and men are saying about what affects their mental health.

Then? Men need to stop dismissing the lived realities of others.

Expand full comment

Given that the subject of this article is suicide, that is: an action that results in death, it may be appropriate to make a distinction between “suicidal ideation”, which is a very popular term for describing emotional distress among a generation that has grown up in a culture of “mental health awareness”. In response to your “men have always died earlier than women” comment, yeah, no, and certainly not from bullying. See, the world has been, until very recently, quite a brutal place with dangers far exceeding mean words... it may behoof you to ponder the wisdom of the words “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me” and perhaps ask yourself why your son doesn’t have enough self-respect to stand up for himself. The suicide rate is increasing, this is not an uncertain fact, young men are killing themselves in greater rates year over year and I’m inclined to put more stock in the wisdom of Viktor Frankl than some contemporary glorified pharmaceutical vendor who deigns to be an expert in “mental health”. It’s far past time we stopped taking the existential question “to be or not to be” for granted, as if it were self evident that “not to be” couldn’t possibly be a sane answer in culture saturated with misanthropic nihilism.... especially for a boy whose culture spends all its time telling him how NOT TO BE “toxic” and whose mothers seem not too very bothered (indeed they even seem to agree) with the sentiment of Gloria Steinem’s proclamation that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. No it shouldn’t be surprising in the least that young men commit suicide, because upon realizing that he won’t be a boy forever he asks, “what does it mean to be a man?”, society responds: “NOTHING AT ALL. (p.s. the future is female and #menaretrash)”.

Expand full comment

I am really sorry you have been wounded so badly as to react like that.

My boys' lived experiences matter.

Expand full comment

It’s important not to misunderstand the purpose of language, a child uses the language given to him to express what he experiences; thus, if the language he has been given is inadequate he may well never be properly understood. And if anything is certain these days it is this: we have become so completely disembodied that we have essentially mistaken the word for a thing for the thing itself. So many more words we have, so many more labels to use than all prior generations of humankind, and yet despite our many words we understand less of ourselves today than at any other allegedly less-enlightened time in human history.

Expand full comment
Sep 16, 2023·edited Sep 17, 2023

I'm struck by the phrase “narrative violation”. But the problem goes beyond just censoring recognition of any gender gaps that disfavor boys or men. Even if one can publicise the evidence, the next hurdle is that the narrative requires that males must be to blame for their own problem. Considering systemic and societal causes is also a violation of the narrative and is shut down accordingly. One see this play out on issues after issue - boys' education, health and, in this case, suicide.

Expand full comment

Male violence is an ongoing epidemic in our society that takes a huge toll on everyone mentally, physically and financially.

Yet we tend to take that fact for granted, at least in all of the other ways that it manifests. If men's tendency to also commit violence against themselves is what it takes to make men sit up and take notice of male violence and motivate them to do something about it, I'm all in favor.

Expand full comment

Misandry has no place in conversations involving facts. The level of your ignorance is a shameful testament to how far our society has fallen. Grow up child.

Expand full comment

You focus on the violence of your fellow men, that's where the problem lies.

The rest of society are waiting to see if men take responsibility for their own, as men should.

Expand full comment

Let's see you take responsibility for FEMALE violence. One of the issues that feminists have covered up since the 1970s is the fact that women perpetrate domestic violence as often as men do. Feminists made death threats against research sociologists Suzanne Steinmetz, Murray Straus, and Richard Gelles, shortly after they published their research findings on that subject.

Expand full comment

*Teeeeeenny tiny violin music*

Expand full comment

Standard "response" from a misandric feminist.

Expand full comment

I'm a dude, you pathetic little fuck.

The forum for pathetic little incel fucks is that way --------------------------->>

Expand full comment

🙄🙄🙄

Expand full comment

Don’t hold your breath, because you’re going to be waiting indefinitely if you expect innocent men and boys to “take responsibility” for violence which they are not responsible for. If I see violence taking place, I’ll do something about it because that is my prerogative; regarding this phantom abstraction you term “male violence”, I reject any and all “responsibility” for a problem that has no real basis in reality. Save your moralizing for someone so deluded as not to recognize the difference between objective facts and ideological projections; also, congratulations, you’ve done an excellent job subverting a conversation about male suicide into one about your own myopic delusions.

Expand full comment

Your attitude is perfectly contemptible, the boys you and broader society bring into existence for no other purpose than to work meaningless jobs to pay for women’s choices and then treat with utter hostility is worthy of nothing less than absolute violence. Your entitlement and lack of empathy invites the very violence you presume to condemn. “Male violence”? How dare you expect anything less.

Expand full comment
Sep 16, 2023·edited Sep 16, 2023

You are "all in favor" of male suicide? What has feminism come to?

Expand full comment

What has feminism come to? It’s logical conclusion.

Expand full comment

That's "its", Lance.

Now now, don't blow up at me again and say I deserve male violence.

Expand full comment

You’ll have to excuse my typically male inattention to trivial detail, you’re very good at representing all the feminists who confuse pettiness with the kind of intelligence unique to the male geniuses they try and fail to emulate... you should consider teaching.

Expand full comment

Nah mate, I just like sticking a pin in and watching you go REEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :-)

Real men CONTROL their emotions.

Expand full comment

Yeah lady. Because I’ve had a gun to my head, all the while people like you presume to lecture people like me about “male violence” people like ME are struggling under the weight of all the bullshit you unjustly hold against us. You know what? I was molested. I was molested by MY GRANDFATHER, you don’t think I fucking know what male violence looks like? Lady, I’ve known, I’ve felt, I’ve seen in the fucking mirror the face of male violence; I was a BOY and he set the standard for what men are, and growing up with that burden I had to sit in quite torment while people like you attempted to confer with my unconscious feeling of absolute self-hatred and a kind of shame that you cannot even fucking imagine. So yeah, I’ll REEEEEEE against the dehumanizing injustice of your myopic contempt, for the sake of my own goddamn sanctity as a human being; I don’t deserve to be made to feel ashamed for the kind of abuses and violence that I WAS VICTIM TO. I have only ever been innocent, and I remain every bit as entitled to basic human consideration as you.

Expand full comment

I'm in favor of men deciding it's time to do something about male violence. How about you? Are you going to just hand-wave to try to distract from the issue?

Go deal with male violence, dude. Take some responsibility.

Expand full comment

Go deal with FEMALE-on-male domestic violence, which happens as often as the converse. The first step to dealing with it is to acknowledge it, instead of covering it up with feminist rhetoric.

Expand full comment

It may happen to you 50% of the time Frank, but not the rest of us.

Expand full comment

Go read the findings of Straus, Steinmetz, and Gelles. The 50-50 findings were fpr a national population sample, which included women's self-reporting of violence towards men.,

Expand full comment

You stupid little moron. My sister was "50-50" with her husband. She slapped him in the chest and didn't leave a mark. He strangled her to death.

"50-50" Go to misogynist hell, disgusting filth.

Expand full comment

Don't be like that. The poster is saying that violence is violence and that men can do something about it.

Expand full comment

No, the poster is trying to attach a stigma of danger to boys and men who take their own lives, she just wants to make it perfectly clear that male suffering is never a justified subject for compassion or concern in world filled with truly worthy victims such as herself. She sees someone talking about male suicide and she wants everyone to understand that she’s the true victim, boys and men be damned for the demons they are, she’s the true victim. Personally, I have no tolerance for her, unfortunately quite common, brand of narcissistic antipathy.

Expand full comment

Tut tut, assuming my sex. You type faster than you think.

Expand full comment
Sep 16, 2023Liked by Richard V Reeves

Thank you Mr Reeves. I posted this elsewhere in your thread but it’s what I’ve come to posit over 25 yrs of study:

I’m going to combine a discovery of Dr John Barry’s with one of my own here.

His third discovered “masculine archetype “ which I know to be a “masculine instinct” - not “conditioned “ because the incredibly multivariate nature of such a thing, unreliable and highly variable contributions to behavior I get it. - the sociology world embraces.

It is nowhere near as powerful durable and permanent as evolutionary produced biological instincts that males possess. Barry’s third one is “to control one’s own emotions” and not expressing them to others.

I term this the Hades Instinct after the private inner psychological world of the greek deity that one sees in males being their natural selves. Stoic. It’s NOT learned. It’s NOT conditioned and it cannot be DECONDITIONED.

It’s a natural INSTINCT.

Instead Barry and I independently propose males take agency for their personal development and action toward life’s goals. They can of course be advised by a therapist in this direction.

I believe this relieves dysthymia in them and yes I believe females have an equivalent dysthymia also rooted in their equally potent feminine instincts. I name those Hera Athena Artemis instincts etc. if blocked in expression or shamed then the human feels dysthymia.

I wish we could let people be their natural selves and stop telling them to “decondition” what is inborn. Instead why don’t we work with what’s natural there and steer toward happiness.

Sorry everyone that I’m intruding.

It’s just that I wish to do something that proves itself to stop more suicides both male and female. Thank you for letting me post.

I appreciate all your opinions.

Expand full comment
Sep 16, 2023Liked by Richard V Reeves

It's going to be really interesting watching the academic world catch up to the now decades of (pseudo) philosophical writing in the "manosphere".

My guess: The narrative will suffer too much from social-imperative editing for peer reviewed journals to clearly state what is in the hearts and minds of millions of men.

In the best case scenario we discover that

a) Critical male values (as per Dr. Paul: biological male instinct) have not reached proper cultural significance during a period of rapid economic and social change.

b) Disfunctional social impulses related to sex (including reproduction) are inhibiting not just men, but also women from integrating their personalities with their biological instincts. This disfunction is apparent in society to any who dare to look for it.

c) There is an absence of a functioning male and female mythos in our current social order. This gaping hole is allowing for disconnection and loneliness on a scale that is uncomfortable to think about.

d) The apparent cultural blindness that we have to males is tinged with fear, shame, and anger.

This darkness is worth looking at. The path through is already being charted by those who write or speak about male experience. Many of these are truly selfless and compassionate people, some are grifters, some are both.

There is also the informal health sector, which hosts an entire industry of male self-development tools. Some of these tools and programs trump anything I have encountered in academic or corporate environments. These organizations are underfunded and occasionally the target of sociopolitical machinations, yet they contain a literal gold mine in practical experience.

If you are a therapist/doctor in the field of men's mental health and you deeply care about this issue, is it not your calling to start a men's group? It requires patience and effort, but the tools are available and the understanding, gained from listening to men and facilitating their expression, is priceless.

Your presence can also contribute to the existing initiatives, powered by men helping themselves, who are in need of facilitation expertise.

These groups will function as community platforms for the massive effort that is required to keep the current situation from getting worse.

Expand full comment

Great post @Dr. Arvin. I have 20 years of mens group experience and have seen countless men at risk for suicide who leaned into the group instead.

Expand full comment

Yes! What Mr Reeves is actually doing in his great fatherly parenting style is not a deconditioning or reprogramming of sons. He is just ADDING mature character to their natural masculine instincts which mothers ALSO do. They teach their boys virtues and character to raise good men.

Expand full comment

I wrote this article for the Washington Post to highlight this issue: https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/04/14/teen-boys-suicide-mental-health/

Expand full comment

Thank you for this thank you for this article. I’m going to combine a discovery of Dr John Barry’s with one of my own here. His third discovered “masculine archetype “ which I know to be a “masculine instinct” - not “conditioned “ because the incredibly multivariate nature of such a thing, unreliable and highly variable contributions to behavior I get it. - the sociology world embraces. It is nowhere near as powerful durable and permanent as evolutionary produced biological instincts that males possess. Barry’s third one is “to control one’s own emotions” and not expressing them to others. I term this the Hades Instinct after the private inner psychological world of the greek deity that one sees in males being their natural selves. Stoic. It’s NOT learned. It’s NOT conditioned and it cannot be DECONDITIONED. It’s a natural INSTINCT. Instead Barry and I independently propose males take agency for their personal development and action toward life’s goals. They can of course be advised by a therapist in this direction. I believe this relieves dysthymia in them and yes I believe females have an equivalent dysthymia also rooted in their equally potent feminine instincts. I name those Hera Athena Artemis instincts etc. if blocked in expression or shamed then the human feels dysthymia. I wish we could let people be their natural selves and stop telling them to “decondition” what is inborn. Instead why don’t we work with what’s natural there and steer toward happiness. Sorry everyone that I’m intruding. It’s just that I wish to do something that proves itself to stop more suicides both male and female. Thank you for letting me post. I appreciate all your opinions.

Expand full comment

The CDC has turned into a political narrative enforcer. Lies of omission. Last 3 years have been eye opening.

Expand full comment

According to the data, yes men complete suicide more often, but women attempt far more often.

The research shows Women tend to utilize softer methods such as pills, cutting wrists, etc, whereas men tend to be far more violent in their attempts: hanging, gunshot, jumping out of a window/off a bridge.

It’s due to the higher success rate of the methods that men tend to utilize that the higher disparity appears.

Not that that dismisses the problem, but the reality is that women suffer from suicidality at a higher rate than men, but are less successful in executing the actual act itself

Expand full comment

Women that ATTEMPT suicide survive it. Men that COMPLETE suicide do not. Huge difference.

Expand full comment

I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to point out here. I would agree it’s different, but I don’t think I said anything that doesn’t align with that

Expand full comment

You don’t think the differences in methodology could possibly be due to a difference in the intended outcome? Could it be possible that the reason why male suicide tends to be fatal is because suicidal males actually INTEND TO DIE whereas suicidal females engage in suicidal behaviors for other reasons? Seems pretty plausible to me. It’s not like females aren’t perfectly well aware of the fact that a noose will be far more effective than a handful of pills.

Expand full comment

When a woman swings her fist at you, does the impact hurt less than a man's because her desire to hurt you was less?

Men are more violent than women, with other people, and with themselves.

Expand full comment

Not true. Domestic violence is equal between the sexes, regardless of how you feminists have collaborated with the media to obfuscate and deny that fact. The research has also found that women were more likely than men to use weapons in the commission of their violence, so the rolling pin or the frying pan, not the fist, would be the female weapon of choice.

Expand full comment

Peddle your misogynist bullshit elsewhere, troll.

Expand full comment

What is your point? How do you understand violence? And before you answer, I am not of the common opinion that men and boys aren't every bit as psychology complex as women and girls; I won't make any apology in calling you out if you reveal yourself to be a misandrist, though given how utterly common and normalized misandry is I will be patient in pointing it out, it's not exactly uncommon for ostensibly humane people to simply take it for granted that males are inhuman and therefore do not recognize their own bigotry against them.

Expand full comment

My point is obvious and clearly stated; your hand-waving does not obscure it, no matter how you try.

But please continue, you are helping to make my point.

Expand full comment

Okay. Let me sum up your insight so we can be sure that we understand each other, is this your perspective: "boys and men commit 80% of all suicide because boys and men are suicidal by nature". Do I have that right?

Expand full comment

At this point my insight to you is that you should stop digging your hole even deeper.

You probably won't though. You appear not to be able to help yourself :-)

Expand full comment

That’s possible, but it’s an assumption. I’m not assuming anything I’m just talking about data, which demonstrates females are also more likely to be depressed than males. Perhaps that’s because men are worse at self reporting symptoms of depression (whether due to conditioning or to sexually dimorphic behavioral tendencies) which would then obviously skew the data.

Women may attempt for attention more than men, again, we don’t know. We have to hold our inferences lightly instead of concluding them into assumptions.

Expand full comment

Assumptions? Like the necessary assumption that the given definition of "depression" is mutually compatible for both sexes?

Expand full comment

To be clear, I am not opposing discussion about men’s mental health disparities. I’m just sharing additional context.

Expand full comment

Context that maybe, and I think clearly is given the massive difference in empirical consequence between suicide and "depression", totally irrelevant to a consideration of suicide; suicide is an unambiguous statistical category, "depression", on the other hand, is lacking is any kind of empirical definition that would justify the conflation and/or inclusion of such a thing in consideration of suicide.

Expand full comment

“Suicide”

I said women are statistically more suicidal than men, just less successful at their attempts. You seem to be attacking a point I’m not making

Expand full comment

That’s not really a response to what I wrote. But your point is valid and I agree with and promote research into sexual dimorphism along behavioral axes especially with regard to diagnostic contexts

Expand full comment