ITEM Jimmy Stewart s film character considers kilng himself for his $5,000 insurance policy for his wife. The film is called It’s a Wonderful Life. (Wonder what he would do if it were a homble life!)
ITEM When the farming crisis led to foreclosures and bankruptcies in the upper midwestem states in the early 1980s. the suicide rate among male farmers tripled.22
When I discuss the male suicide rate in workshops, a woman will often ask, "But isn’t suicide a selfish act? It leaves behind people who need you and love you.” That’s correct — but much more correct for women. I lere’s why When a woman is divorced, she has physical custody of the children 90 percent of the time She feels an everyday connection to her loved ones, to her feeling of being needed In my listening to thousands of women and men whose relatives or friends have committed suicide, I observed that people who feel genuinely loved and needed rarely commit suicide. Since the woman is more likely to be leaving behind people she knows need her and love her, she is less likely to commit suicide.
In contrast, men commit suicide more often when they are unemployed or lose their life savings in a depression because then the man feels that by killing himself, he is killing the burden For him, then, committing suicide is not a selfish ас», but an act of love — relieving his loved ones of a burden (At least that’s the way he sees it at that moment) However, if he thinks he’ll be able to earn more money’ again — and not be a burden — he stays alive. Or if someone really convinces him he’s not a burden even if he does remain unemployed, he’ll live.
When a woman gets angry at a man for committing suicide, she is usually assuming selfishness on his pan because that’s what it would have been for her, given her situation But it isn’t usually his
The single biggest solution to male suicide is making men feel needed as humans Not just as wallets When men feel needed primarily as wallets, they are more likely to commit suicide when their wallets are empty.