Loved ones were shocked to learn that my son’s first suicide attempt was reportedly in his “therapeutic” preschool—approximately six or seven years before he joined my family through adoption. According to Brycen’s recollection to me and later confirmed by records I obtained, the preschool incident was the first of many suicidal gestures, plans, and attempts that ultimately ended in tragic suicide when he was only 23. Yes, little kids, pre-teens, adolescents, and youths alike can and do contemplate, plan, gesture at, attempt to, and even end their lives. Not only did I lose my own beloved young son to suicide, I have worked with many children and youths—from the little ones to those stepping into young adulthood—who were wrestling in some way with wanting to end their lives. All kids are vulnerable to suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, and non-lethal attempts when they are suffering intense emotional pain due to loss and trauma. However, the data is clear that it is our boys and young men who are crucially and catastrophically vulnerable to lethal suicide attempts and to actually ending their lives by suicide.
Tragically, our society lacks empathy for our at-risk young sons. Does this lack of empathy muffle the data showing that young male suicide is a silent epidemic? Or does the chicken come before the egg? Perhaps the muffling of the suicide risk facing our young sons results from indifference to the fact that 78% of all suicide victims, of all ages, are male. This data unequivocally obliterates the current cultural and political narrative that males are a “privileged” class (American Psychological Society, Boys and Men Guidelines Group, 2018; Pluckrose and Lindsay, 2020). Do the “privileged” really throw themselves off the cliffs of decadence at a percentage of 78% of all suicide victims? Is it really the “privileged” that suffer such unbearable mental and emotional suffering that life isn’t for them? Or, does the political narrative have it wrong?
The boys and young men who account for 81% of youth suicides in the ages 10-24 category were likely suffering unspeakable anguish due to childhood trauma and loss mixed with seemingly inescapable current struggles. Perhaps they also witnessed or experienced no empathy nor validation for the burdens, inequalities, pain, losses, and abuses that boys and men suffer in this world: Starvation of skin- to-skin comfort and emotional nurturance by both parents, circumcision, developmentally inappropriate schools, psychiatric drugging, sexual abuse, dating violence, community violence, human trafficking, body shame, male disposability, lack of male-positive social programs and empowerment initiatives, lack of father’s rights, incessant anti-male vitriol in the media, sexist (misandrist) social media attacks, college date rape allegations with no due process, and no support for launching into self-confident manhood and healthy romantic partnerships. Theirs was the generation that also grew up with messages of “Girls Rule, Boys Drool”, “masculinity is toxic”, and “Boys are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them”.
It isn’t “privilege”, but pulverization of spirit that has led to our young male suicide epidemic—the epidemic that no one is talking about.
References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.: https://bit.ly/3g6jOPo
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015a: https://bit.ly/3g8iKdD
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180227203107/https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/toolstemplates/entertainmented/tips/SuicideYouth.html
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (2019). Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISCARS): Fatal Injury and Violence Data: Fatal Injury Reports, National and Regional: 2019 [Data set]. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.htm
Freeman, A., Mergl, R., Kohls, E., Székely, A., Gusmao, R., Arensman, E., … &; Rummel-Kluge, C. (2017). A cross-national study on gender differences in suicide intent. BMC Psychiatry, 17(1), 1-11.
Pluckrose, H., & Lindsay, J. A. (2020). Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity— and Why This Harms Everybody. Pitchstone Publishing.
American Psychological Association, Boys and Men Guidelines Group (2018):
https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf
Couture, L. A. (2023). Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons: Healing the Wounds of an Anti-Boy Culture by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended. Seacoast Press/MindStir Media. https://laurieacouture.com/products/
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