Mary KennyFive times as many men as women are taking their own lives
The Taoiseach Enda Kenny said recently that suicide among men is higher because women “were more likely to seek mental health treatment” and to talk to their friends about their worries. He urged health groups and voluntary societies to reach out to men to take care of their mental health.
Five times as many men as women are taking their own lives: Dan Neville of the Irish Association of Suicidology said the traditions of society were to blame.
Yet the tragedy of suicide cannot just be caused by “the traditions of society”, since suicide among men is higher in every society, although this involves many different traditions. A major factor in men’s greater predilection to suicide is that males always take more risks – risk-taking and aggression (which can be self-aggression) are biologically linked to male hormones.
Women do talk to each other more, and that probably does help: talking is good. But it’s not the full story.
Because of their motherhood role, women are often more aware of the impact that their death would have on others.
Social factor
There is indeed a social factor: modern society often makes men feel useless. Men are constantly portrayed in a negative light, and whatever privileges they once enjoyed as the more dominant sex are now either removed or disparaged.
Again, it is mothers who notice this. I meet so many mothers who say to me: “My daughter is grand, she’ll always make something of her life. But my son is a daily worry – he has no sense of what his role should be.”
Suicide isn’t just a mental health issue either: a person may be sorrowful, unhappy or have a melancholy disposition, without having a “mental health issue”. Not everything in life needs to be medicalised.
The taboo on suicide in the past, once sternly enforced by the Christian Churches, is now thought cruel: but it was, surely, intended as a means to deter the Young Werthers – Goethe’s influential tale about a young man who kills himself, which unleashed a wave of suicides across Continental Europe – from taking their own lives.
Children are different and respond in individual ways to experiences.
Different perspectives on boarding schools
In his autobiography, Ivan Yates gives an account of how unhappy he was when sent away to boarding school as a young lad, and this seems to have touched a nerve with many people who were unhappy school boarders at a young age.
Yet, when I was a youngster, we read endless children’s and teenage storybooks about the joys of a boarding school life.
I was entranced by Enid Blyton’s Fourth Form at Mallory Towers. Girls’ magazines were crammed full of tales about the midnight feasts, nail-biting lacrosse matches and sleuthing derring-do of spirited boarding-school girls. Lads read about Billy Bunter at Greyfriars – a comic strip which was full of what we would now call ‘abuse’: mocking about obesity and subjecting BB to “six of the best” (a sixfold thrashing on the backside) for misdemeanours.
At the relatively late age of 12, I did go to convent boarding school and I quite enjoyed it. I have also encountered younger women who said that boarding school brought them a real sense of stability – especially if home life was a bit shaky.
Wars are seen from the viewpoint of history
It will be a fair and fitting tribute to the Irishmen and women who participated in World Wars I and II if this State is represented at London’s Cenotaph for Remembrance Day in November.
Not everyone will support such participation in what is essentially a British and Commonwealth occasion, but I would guess that most Irish people today would take a graceful attitude to a historical fact: that so many volunteered and gave their service, and sometimes their lives, and they should be honoured for doing so.
Yet history nearly always views any event differently from the way it was seen at the time. World War I is now regarded as a mournful waste of life: at the time, it was seen as “the war to end all wars”.
World War II is now seen within the context of the horrors of the genocide and the extermination camps of the Third Reich. But during the period of 1939-45, the concentration camps, much less the frightful onslaught against the Jews and other minorities, were hardly mentioned in despatches.
Even in 1945, when the camps were opened, the horror was often brushed aside as a minor sideshow.
Whatever is occurring today – in our country or in others – will be seen quite differently in times to come. The perspective of history puts a totally different interpretation on contemporary events, ideas, and analysis.
It was wise of the Vatican to develop the concept of “thinking in centuries”. The distillation of events and ideas takes time.