Masculinities and suicide: unsettling ‘talk’ as a response to suicide in men

ABSTRACT

An increasingly common way that high rates of male suicide are understood is via men’s ostensibly poorer abilities to talk about – and more generally seek help for – problems in general, and emotional problems specifically. This has led to the development of public mental health campaigns which urge men to ‘speak up’ more often about the problems they face. I argue that both the initial claim, and the enactment of this claim in public mental health campaigns, is problematic, resting on simplistic assumptions about men and gender difference, and serving to detract attention from structural drivers of suicide. Drawing on a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with ten men who had self-harmed, thought about, or attempted suicide, this paper focuses attention on the content and contexts of ‘talk’. I argue that public health campaigns promoting ‘talk’ in response to male suicide neglect the interpersonal and structural contexts in which talk occurs, including considerations of power and structural inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinities
• suicide
• emotion
• stigma

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all interview participants, those who supported recruitment, Briege Nugent for early RA support, and Alcohol Research UK for funding the study. Special thanks to Ruth Lewis and Fiona McQueen for comments on an earlier version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Alcohol Research UK [SG 14/15 202].