A Silent Crisis in Men’s Mental Health

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Men’s mental health is often overlooked at a societal level, and suicide presents a silent crisis in the landscape of men’s mental health. In 2018, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), men died by suicide almost 4 times more than women, with white men accounting for 60.67% of almost 50,000 deaths. The rate of suicide has steadily been increasing from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018.1 Some key social determinants of suicide include occupation, family issues and divorce, adverse childhood experience, and life event transitions, such as parenthood.2

When analyzing by profession, men still have higher suicide rates in every instance compared to women. From a CDC report in 2018, suicide rates are incredibly high in those working in Construction and Extraction, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair especially. The report found that while there is a slight trend that higher paying jobs indicate less suicide rates, it is not indicative of salary being the primary reason. In addition, unemployment and low job security are predictors of depression, an underlying condition in approximately half of suicides.3 More research needs to be conducted to better understand the impact of occupation on men’s mental health. Especially in professions with high stress or trauma incidences, such as the medical field or law enforcement, there needs to be better systems of support for discussing trauma, suicidal ideation, and normalizing mental health seeking behaviors.

By increasing research and awareness of this issue, positive changes can occur through human mitigation and infrastructure. There are many, many factors that interplay when mental health is concerned, since physical and mental health are closely intertwined; so this article is only to draw attention to one of the many groups that are disproportionately suffering from mental health related issues. Capacity Path’s Mission to provide real, practical, and tactical solutions for support is just one way to approach bettering our community by reaching out to caregivers, first responders, and others who are experiencing heightened stress and potentially trauma during this time.  


Works Cited

  1. AFSP. Suicide statistics. (2020, July 29). Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
  2. Affleck, W., Carmichael, V., & Whitley, R. (2018). Men’s Mental Health: Social Determinants and Implications for Services. Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 63(9), 581–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743718762388
  3. Peterson C, Sussell A, Li J, Schumacher PK, Yeoman K, Stone DM. Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation — National Violent Death Reporting System, 32 States, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:57–62. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6903a1external icon.
  4. Products – Data Briefs – Number 361 – March 2020. (2020, April 08). Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db362.html

Contributor: Yenny Wu