Male suicides lead by 4-to-1
Per the 2000 World Almanac and Book of Facts, page 892, annual suicide rates for all ages and sexes were 30,525 in 1997. Male suicides were 24,492 versus female 6,043, a 4-1 ratio. Furthermore, by far the biggest bulge in suicide rates is men in the prime divorce years of 25-64, with a total of 15,905 male suicides in these years. The significance of this is perhaps more dramatically stated as an average of about 300 adult men a week killing themselves in America.
Divorce a leading cause among men
Most suicides are caused by depression and despair over life circumstances. But a question arises of how many of these male suicides are caused by despair at the treatment that men receive in divorce courts. According to researcher Augustine Kposowa, as reported in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, "Divorced or separated men are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as men who remain married. On the other hand, a marital split is not a significant risk factor for suicide among women."
There are several ways to analyse these data. In current culture half of men can be expected to be divorced. If that doubles their suicide rate from what it would otherwise be, and divorced men are twice as likely to commit suicide, this means that two-thirds of suicides are among divorced men, and half of these are caused by divorce. Half of two-thirds is one-third, which indicates that total male suicides caused by divorce are about 100 a week.
Another way to analyse these data are that female suicides in the prime divorce year age groups of 25-64 total 4,367. If Kposowa is correct that female suicides rates are not affected by divorce, we can assume that 4,367 is a base rate of non-divorce related suicide. Subtracting 4,367 from the 15,905 male suicides would give a figure of 11,538 divorce related male suicides annually, or about 200 a week.
And from the 1996 Universe Almanac comes this stark statement, "Many experts believe that suicide rates are far grimmer than reported. They contend that numerous suicides are categorized as accidents or other deaths to spare families." The problem of divorce related male suicide may be far larger that even these rough estimates.
Admittedly, both of these are very rough figures, and caution should be exercized in using these rough estimates. One of the major problems in this area is that no good research has been done on the issue of divorce related male suicide. We note that although Kposowa has uncovered alarming trends, even he has not yet addressed the question of overall rates, and has not yet made an assessment of the overall magnitude of the problem. The primary significance of our own analysis, is that it indicates that there is a huge "invisible" problem of divorce related male suicide, and that serious research ought to be devoted to this issue.
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