Male suicide on the rise

Alex Bailey reviews the rising trend of young male suicide

Sid Vicious was 21 when he committed suicide by heroin overdose.

A BIRMINGHAM University student was discovered dead in a lecture hall in the second week of this term, after being found to have hanged himself. The body of Mohammed Abdelmohsin Omer, aged 29 was encountered in the Gisbert Kapp building on campus by fellow students arriving for an early lecture on Monday 19th of January. A student at the scene horrified by such ‘waste of a life’ believes that ‘he did it in the lecture room so that he could be found by those he was studying with’; a cry for help realised too late. Such chilling news has undoubtedly appalled the student population nationwide, yet the unnerving proximity is a shock that hits home particularly to us here at Birmingham.

However, the prevalence of suicide in young males under the age of 35 is astonishingly out of control. According to recent research, steadily rising statistics over the last 30 years reveal that suicide is now the second most common way to die for a man between 15 and 34, beaten only slightly by road deaths. Accounting for the deaths of over 900 young men each year in the UK alone, if suicide is the second most serious public health issue for young men – exactly why don’t we know about it? Considering the constant wave of media attention that continually places young men at the cause of society’s problems, perhaps those comprising the same category most likely to commit knife and gun crime are simply just not recognised as needing help. Society’s easy stereotype simply does not want to know. 

Labeled the ‘silent epidemic’ by the BBC, other reasons thought to account for the surging numbers of suicidal death in young men include the fact that ‘they don’t seek help when they have problems’. Professor Appleby, part of the team that launched the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in 2002, goes on to say that despite plans to make mental health services more readily available, young men ‘often don’t conceptualise their problems as problems of a medical kind’. Therefore, the only obvious solution which is to dramatically improve mental health services is unlikely to make an impact.  Instead, the NSPS’ only suggestion is to remove items such as shower cubicles and curtain tracks that provide a ‘ligature point’ from which institutional inmates can strangle themselves.  The introduction of ‘anti-ligature’ furniture in institutions such as prisons and hospitals has shown to have reduced levels of young men’s suicide in previous years. However, such basic and minimal methodology totally fails to tackle suicidal intentions at their roots.

Additionally, it is obvious that recognition of suicide in ordinary members of society has been severely neglected. The NSPS’ focus on the suicides of criminals and psychiatric patients does nothing to remove the stigma attached to mental health, and appallingly fails to acknowledge the increasing quantity of those suicides that are unpredictably committed in silent despair. According to Professor Appleby, the two main groups of young men driven to suicide are those with mental illness and those who ‘have lost their ties to society, work, family and friends’. It is astonishing that in this second category, the student community is nowhere identified as the sector perhaps most susceptible to ‘losing ties’. Not only does the high proportion of young men comprising University population indicate a large risk owing to probability alone, but as a new and potentially intimidating occupation may unwittingly alienate the individual. The desperate need to increase awareness of this widespread danger specifically in the student body is an issue crucially emphasised by our own establishment’s latest victim.