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| 75% of all suicides being committed by men - over 22,000 men per year. And suicide rates for divorced men are even higher than that - divorced and separated men are TWICE AS LIKELY to commit suicide as other men, per the study "Marital Status and Suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study" by Augustine J. Kposowa, Ph.D., at the University of California at Riverside. CBS News covered the report in some detail here. The study showed that being single versus being married made no difference in suicide rates. - Simply 'being married' does not provide singificant mental health benefits relating to suicide. Even more tellingly, for women marital status, married, single, separated or divorced, made NO STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE in suicide rates. - So somehow, divorce affects men in a much more significant way than women. One wonders what that way could be... Previous to this study, increased rates of suicide for men had been explained away by claiming that significant mental and physical health benefits were to be had from married life, and by 'congitive differences' between men and women - women purportedly spending more time 'processing' their problems and thinking more 'inclusively' than men, Well Dr. Kposowa's research has exposed that canard, (wait, let me speak plainly  that misandrous, shovenist tripe for what it is.Let's take a moment and really reveiw those numbers, which we will extrapolate using the published rough perecentages in the CBS news article: Total Suicides: 30,000 per year Men's Suicides: 22,500 per year Women's Suicides: 7,500 per year Divorced/Separated Men's Suicides: 14,850 per year. Hmm. I wonder how many men committed suicide outside of a divorce/separation. ...Well, I know how to subtract, lets see... Non Divorced/Separated Men's Suicides: 7,650 per year. Wait... that's approximately equal to the number of suicides for women. So it seems reasonable to guess, that if it were not for the way men are treated in divorce, those 14,850 men PER YEAR would still be alive. Dr. Kposowa's study; the first study that cared enough about men to look at the details of why men kill themselves; shows us that if you hear about a man committing sucide the odds are better than 2:1 that he is either a divorcee or going through a divorce. SO NOW COMES THE BIG QUESTION: What is so terrible about divorce that men would kill themselves to escape it? The answer is simple: Slavery. To quote Adrian Banks' article on suicide and divorce: So what is the main cause of [divorced male] suicide? […] The answer to this question is not that difficult, but before someone can accept the truth of the main causes of suicide, one must first accept the truth that slavery is just as much an institution today as it has been throughout history. The more oppressive and cruel the enslavement, the more suicides there will be among the enslaved classes of society. Why do you think that, in pre civil war times, slaves were kept in the holes of ships and not allowed on the decks? Simple, it kept the slave trader's precious cargo of labor from jumping into the ocean. As Winston Churchill stated during World War II, "it is better to perish that to live as slaves." […] In a divorce situation today, there need not be any legitimate grounds thanks to no fault divorce. A man can be a hard working fellow who supports his family and loves his children, but if his wife decides to divorce him, there is nothing he can do. Kposowa cites "financial obligations," in explaining the preponderance of divorcees amongst male suicides noting that "The courts in the United States are in a position now whereby money is given to the woman, or the man is forced to pay alimony, child support. The man is also asked, in some [perhaps most] cases, to vacate the house." Kposowa also notes: "If a man loses custody of the children and the woman keeps those children, there are situations whereby she may not allow the man to see the children, and that causes some depression." -No kidding. Suicidal divorced men are merely slaves leaping from the decks – consider the facts:
Having lost their wives, their children, their assets, and finally their ability to earn a living, and being relegated to permanent poverty, divorced men are killing themselves in record numbers - over 15,000 men per year, killed by divorce. Our job is to support them, and encourage our government to notice, and care. -M |
These articles are interesting as well (was linked from the above site)
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| Research report Marital status and suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study Augustine J Kposowa [...] OBJECTIVES  The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of marital status on the risk of suicide, using a large nationally representative sample. A related objective was to investigate the association between marital status and suicide by sex.METHODS Cox proportional hazards regression models were applied to data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study, based on the 1979-1989 follow up. In estimating the effect of marital status, adjustments were made for age, sex, race, education, family income, and region of residence.RESULTS For the entire sample, higher risks of suicide were found in divorced than in married persons. Divorced and separated persons were over twice as likely to commit suicide as married persons (RR=2.08, 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) 1.58, 2.72). Being single or widowed had no significant effect on suicide risk. When data were stratified by sex, it was observed that the risk of suicide among divorced men was over twice that of married men (RR=2.38, CI 1.77, 3.20). Among women, however, there were no statistically significant differentials in the risk of suicide by marital status categories.CONCLUSIONS Marital status, especially divorce, has strong net effect on mortality from suicide, but only among men. The study showed that in epidemiological research on suicide, more accurate results would be obtained if samples are stratified on the basis of key demographic or social characteristics. The study further observed that failure to control for relevant socioeconomic variables or combining men and women in the same models could produce misleading results. |
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| Why Women Are Less Likely Than Men To Commit Suicide ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 1998) — Many studies have identified a strong link between suicide and diagnosable mental illness, especially depression. So because women suffer from depression at a much higher rate than men, they would seem to be at higher risk for suicide. But women actually commit suicide about one-fourth as often as men. Writing in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry, George E. Murphy, M.D., an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says that women may be protected because of the way they think about problems and interact with others. "Women process their experiences with friends. They discuss their feelings, seek feedback and take advice," Murphy says. "They are much more likely to tell a physician how they feel and cooperate in the prescribed treatment. As a result, women get better treatment for their depression." That treatment may help protect them from suicide, but Murphy says there is more to it. The approach to problem-solving is what lands a woman in a psychiatrist's office in the first place. And that approach may be keeping female suicide rates lower than those of men. Suicide vs. attempted suicide There are roughly 30,000 suicides in the United States each year, and three-fourths of those are men. But the number of attempted suicides is at least 10 times that, and even that estimate may be low because many suicide attempts are euphemistically classified as lacerations or accidental poisonings when patients receive treatment in hospital emergency rooms. Although suicide rates are lower among women, women lead men two to one in suicide attempts. So, Murphy says at least 200,000 women are involved in suicide attempts annually. But he points out that attempted suicide most often is not an attempt to actually end one's life. Its purpose, he says, is to survive with changed circumstances. "An attempted suicide is not really an attempt at suicide in about 95 percent of cases. It is a different phenomenon. It's most often an effort to bring someone's attention, dramatically, to a problem that the individual feels needs to be solved. Suicide contains a solution in itself," he says. In attempted suicide, both men and women tend to use methods that allow for second thoughts or rescue. Murphy says that when people intend to survive, they choose a slowly effective, or ineffective, means such as an overdose of sleeping pills. That contrasts to the all-or-nothing means like gunshots or hanging used by actual suicides. In the past, researchers who looked at the high rate of attempted suicide in women concluded that women were just not as efficient as men at taking their own lives. Murphy calls that "sexist baloney" and points to statistics that show that like men, women who commit suicide most often use guns. However, even as the number of women using the most lethal means increases, the suicide rate in women has slowly declined. "So it really goes back to the same thing -- that women, when they intend to do it, can be just as effective as men in committing suicide. But they aren't so inclined," Murphy says. Cognitive differences Murphy believes women are less inclined to commit suicide because their thinking is more inclusive. While a man might tend to throw aside seemingly peripheral issues to get to the core of a problem, a woman might take more things into account. She may continue to seek input and process problems long after the point where men decide on a course of action. "She'll consider not just her feelings but also the feelings of others -- her family, the children, even acquaintances, and how those people will be affected by a decision like suicide," Murphy says. "A man is much less likely to take those things into account. He makes his decision, and it's about him, so he doesn't feel the need to share it with anyone else." But before they ever get to the point of considering suicide, Murphy says, women are much more likely to seek help with their problems. The classic example is asking for directions when driving. Many men refuse to do that, perhaps seeing it as an admission of weakness. They believe they are supposed to be competent in all areas. Because they are not, they are at risk. Women, on the other hand, are much more likely to seek advice and take it. Even though depressed or alcoholic men are less likely to look for help, it still may be possible to prevent many suicides, Murphy believes. He says alert physicians might be able to pick up on risk factors and refer men into treatment to help them look for ways to solve their problems without ending their lives. "Half of all people who commit suicide have seen a physician within a month of their fatal act," he says. "Mostly they didn't get diagnosed, and if they did, they didn't get treated very vigorously." That requires recognition that depressed men may understate their pain or their difficulty with a particular problem. Murphy says such recognition is essential if men are ever to benefit from the treatments that protect women from suicide. Murphy and the late Eli Robins, M.D., conducted the first comprehensive study of suicide 40 years ago, studying every suicide that occurred in St. Louis and St. Louis County during a one-year period. - Source |
Some examples:
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Distraught Father's Courthouse Suicide Highlights America's Male Suicide Epidemic By Glenn Sacks A distraught father struggling with overdue child support obligations and adverse family court decisions committed suicide on the steps of the downtown San Diego courthouse Monday. Angrily waving court documents, 43 year-old Derrick Miller walked up to court personnel at the entrance, said "You did this to me," and shot himself in the head. Miller is one of 300,000 Americans who have taken their own lives over the past decade--as many Americans as were killed in combat in World War II. America is in the throes of a largely unrecognized suicide epidemic, as suicide has become the eighth leading cause of death in the United States today, and the third leading cause of death among adolescents. All Americans recognize that our country is rife with violent crime, but few know that 50% more Americans kill themselves than are murdered. Who is committing suicide? For the most part, men. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, males commit suicide four times as often as females do, and have higher suicide rates in every age group. There are many risk factors for suicide, including substance abuse and mental illness, but the two situations in which men are most likely to kill themselves are after the loss of a job, and after a divorce. Because our society strongly defines manhood as the ability to work and provide for one's loved ones, unemployed men often see themselves as failures and as burdens to their families. Thus it is not surprising that while there is no difference in the suicide rate of employed and unemployed women, the suicide rate of unemployed men is twice that of employed men. It is for this reason that economic crises generally lead to male suicide epidemics. During the Midwest farm crisis of the 1980s, for example, the suicide rate of male farmers tripled. A sharp increase in male suicide occurred after the destruction of Flint, Michigan's 70 year-old auto industry, as documented in the disturbing 1989 film "Roger and Me." Some suicide experts fear a rise in suicide related to our current economic downturn. The other most common suicide victims are divorced and/or estranged fathers like Derrick Miller. In fact, a divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother, and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father. According to Los Angeles divorce consultant Jayne Major: "Divorced men are often devastated by the loss of their children. It's a little known fact that in the United States men initiate only a small number of the divorces involving children. Most of the men I deal with never saw their divorces coming, and they are often treated very unfairly by the family courts." According to Sociology Professor Augustine Kposowa of the University of California at Riverside, "The link between men and their children is often severed because the woman is usually awarded custody. A man may not get to see his children, even with visitation rights. As far as the man is concerned, he has lost his marriage and lost his children and that can lead to depression and suicide." There have been a rash of father suicides directly related to divorce and mistreatment by the family courts over the past few years. For example, New York City Police Officer Martin Romanchick, a Medal of Honor recipient, hung himself after being denied access to his children and being arrested 15 times on charges brought by his ex-wife, charges the courts deemed frivolous. Massachusetts father Steven Cook, prevented from seeing his daughter by a protection order based upon unfounded allegations, committed suicide after he was jailed for calling his four-year-old daughter on the wrong day of the week. (Feck: Insane I stranger would not be imprisoned for calling her any damn day of the week. But its only her father) Darrin White, a Canadian father who was stripped of the right to see his children and was about to be jailed after failing to pay a child support award tantamount to twice his take home pay, hung himself. His 14 year-old daughter Ashlee later wrote to her nation's Prime Minister, saying, "this country's justice system has robbed me of one of the most precious gifts in my life, my father." We'll never know exactly why Derrick Miller took his life and if his suicide could have been prevented. What we do know is that male suicide is one of America's most serious public health issues, and it is time to address it. This column first appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune (1/11/02). |
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Man kills himself on courthouse steps   UNION-TRIBUNE January 8, 2002 A 43-year-old Paradise Hills man, reportedly depressed about a court ruling on overdue child support, fatally shot himself early yesterday on the steps of the downtown San Diego courthouse. The man was identified as Derrick K. Miller Sr., of Alta View Drive, a spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner's Office said. Witnesses told police that Miller, carrying court documents, walked up to a security guard at the entrance to the courthouse at 220 W. Broadway and began raving. "You did this to me," he told the guard about 6:25 a.m., apparently referring to court officials, the Medical Examiner's Office spokeswoman said. Then, Miller pulled out a handgun and fired one shot into his head. The blast killed him instantly, the spokeswoman said. Miller apparently was depressed about a ruling on child support from a previous relationship, said San Diego Police spokesman Bill Robinson. |
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| Last Road Out of Hell January 15, 2002 by James Hanback, Jr. We have provided for the survival of man against all enemies except his fellow man. --Lyman Lloyd Bryson Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names. --Proverb On Jan. 7, a 43-year-old man, apparently depressed about a recent overdue child support ruling against him, shot himself to death on the steps of the San Diego Courthouse. According to reports in the San Diego Union Tribune, Derrick K. Miller walked up to a security guard around 6:25 a.m. and began raving about injustices thrust upon him by the legal system. Court papers in one hand, he produced a handgun with the other and fired one shot into his skull, instantly killing himself. What the six-paragraph story in the Union Tribune doesn’t say, however, is that Miller’s actions represent a small sampling of a disturbing trend all over the world. Men who are fed up with what they see as injustices perpetrated upon them by court systems that, in cases of child custody, child support, and divorce, generally favor women, are increasingly taking their own lives. The problem has become so widespread, in fact, that some governments—Australia’s, for instance—have implemented new programs aimed at getting suicidal men help in overcoming the urge to end it all. Likewise, official studies from both Australia and Ireland within the past year have connected an alarming increase in male suicide in their respective countries to the breaking down of family structure, and a perception by men of wrong-doing to them perpetrated by the legal system. According to the Irish study, five times more men than women in that country die from suicide each year, and more than 40 percent of those are men under 30. The principle cause of death for men between the ages of 15-34 in Ireland, in fact, is suicide. Once upon a time, more men died from traffic accidents. The Irish report further stated that the "strong protective effect of marriage" was confirmed as prevention for male suicide. Single, separated, divorced, or widowed individuals all had higher suicide rates. In similar fashion, the Australian study found that younger men in that country were particularly susceptible to suicide upon divorce or separation from their children. "Recent research into male suicide in this age group revealed that males in the 'separation phase' of a marriage break-up were most at risk of suicide, compared with widowed or divorced males," the report’s authors wrote. "Marriage breakdown is a significant characteristic of male suicide in the 24-39 age bracket. The anxiety and emotional pain of separation and divorce appear to effect [sic] men differently. "Whilst suicides may simply be recorded as statistics, it is the increasing number of murder/suicides, involving children that have brought the tragic reality of male suicide, and male mental health issues in general into the public arena. "Where children are concerned, there is evidence to suggest that many men sense they are being discriminated against in family court judgements, and often find themselves in financial straits having to pay legal fees and child support payments. The difficulty in maintaining access to children also heightens the frustration and isolation of separated and/or divorced men." Two studies, two separate nations, and a plethora of social scientists have thus apparently confirmed what individual families have known and news reports have ignored for years: family courts all over Western society are unfair to men, and some men are dying as a result. In the U.S. alone, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control estimate that approximately 80 percent of all suicides every year are by men. Compared to homicide rates recorded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of suicides every year in this country is about 32 percent higher than the number of homicides. Although both the Irish and Australian studies suggest that mental health professionals should focus more on men and getting men to help themselves out of the depressions which result in suicide, perhaps a greater contributor to men’s well-being would be to reform family courts. Perhaps it’s time to change things so that men going through divorce, child custody battles, and child support hearings are given a fair shake. Even in these days of Western feminine liberation there are men who pay alimony. Why? Women in Western culture have been welcomed into the workplace. Everyone knows a woman can make her own ends meet if she so chooses. If, in divorce, the female is absolved from all marital obligations to her former husband, why should he still be forced to be her breadwinner? Likewise, child support is no longer about providing for children. It is a multi-million dollar industry designed to generate revenue for individual state governments, at least in the United States. Visit any fathers advocates forum on the Internet and you’ll find a variety of horror stories about child support rulings which deprive a man of his own livelihood, while his ex-wife maintains custody of the children, denies him visitation, and has married another man who is also providing for her. Adding insult to injury, there’s even a Yahoo! Group dedicated to informing women about how to achieve this particular lifestyle. It’s called "Ex-husband Is Now My Slave" and currently has more than 900 members. You can find it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ex-hus..._now_my_slave/. So if the family court situation is the root cause of so much trouble--and is creating a world where men take their own lives out of desperation and women brag about it on the Internet--why, apparently, is nothing being done to change it? That answer lies in the media. No matter who you are or where you live, chances are there is a man in your life, or in your extended family, who has been through some of the pain and anguish associated with divorce, child custody, or child support battles. Chances are that the toll of that situation was much greater on him than his former spouse. In America, divorce court is routine, and fictionalized accounts of it are even broadcast on daytime television. Unfortunately for the men involved in genuine cases, though, the media tends to ignore the courts’ consistent discrimination against them as simple facts of life which cannot (or should not) be changed. Miller--he who shot himself on the San Diego Courthouse steps--is the exception which proves the rule. His case was so dramatic--and public—as a result of his suicide that the Union Tribune could not ignore it. But what happens now that his brief story has been told? Will an intrepid reporter examine the suicide rates of divorced men in San Diego and discover a pattern? Will said reporter examine the family court system from the inside out and determine for himself whether justice is routinely served or men routinely discriminated against? It’s not probable. Instead, the Union Tribune reporters will do precisely what I did when I faced a similar story as a police reporter for The Review Appeal in Franklin, Tenn., in the mid-1990s. They’ll simply go on about their business--writing about budgets, schools, police chases, and criminal trials--until the next man kills himself on the courthouse steps in similar dramatic fashion. Then they’ll write six more paragraphs about it and move on again. That’s what good police reporters do. Sometimes I think back on that bright production day at The Review Appeal. I remember I was writing a small two-paragraph note for what we called "The Police Blotter" about someone who had exposed himself (and escaped police) at a local mall. The radio scanner had been silent all afternoon and, just two hours before we were to put the paper to bed, I heard two sentences from a preternaturally calm female voice creep across the airwaves on the Franklin Police Department’s frequency: "He’s on the Square. He’s got a gun to his head." My office chair was probably still spinning as I ran out the door. Two streets down was Public Square, the Franklin town center where there were several shops, Franklin City Hall, and the Williamson County Courthouse. No sooner had I turned the corner where I could see the tall statue in the Square gleaming against the afternoon sun than I heard the gunshot, and saw a crowd of police and emergency personnel swarm in upon the man as his formerly seated body crumpled to the concrete. While my photographer snapped away at the scene, I talked to witnesses and police officers. I asked where the man had come from, who he was, and why he might have committed such an act. Some faces in the crowd told me they had seen the man walk out of the courthouse, so while my editor continued to interview witnesses, I went to see the Williamson County Court Clerk. There, I learned the man’s identity and that he had spent most of the day in divorce court. After apparently losing his job, his wife, and a battle with depression, he had finally given up hope. The article I wrote for the paper the next day contained all the details a good police reporter includes: who, what, when, where, and some possible reasons why. I had quotes from the officers who worked the scene as well as a few notes from the court filings. When I finished writing, I walked outside and smoked a Marlboro I bummed from someone in the production department (even though I’m not a smoker). The image of that man with the gun played over and over in my head, and as I exhaled the stale smoke of the cigarette from my lungs, I wondered what smoke and gunpowder from a firearm must taste like at such close range. Sometimes I think back on that bright production day, and I wonder why I didn’t continue to follow up on that story. I wonder why I felt that examining that man’s case in the cold light of an objective reporter’s eye wasn’t worth pursuing. I wonder what I might have found had I been persistent. Most of all, though, I wonder if I might not have been able to shed some light and create change in some small way. And maybe saved someone else’s life. That’s what a good reporter should have done. |
- from here
MY EX HUSBAND IS NOW MY SLAVE 8 May 2002
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| This site requires a warning as reading the content is likely to produce high blood pressure and a possible heart attack you have been warned !!!!!!! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ex-hus..._now_my_slave/ Category: Adult A serious and supportive discussion forum for divorced or legally separated women to discuss how they have used divorce, child support, alimony and the courts to make their ex-husbands their financial slaves. Also how ex-wives have used the psychology of divorce to turn their ex-husbands into servants and slaves for their own amusement and enrichment. A forum for women to share their success stories in humiliating and bankrupting ex-husbands--and then moving on, with their ex's money, to better relationships with more attractive men. Humiliation. Revenge. Female power. Female financial domination. No doubt about it: For many women, divorce can be the road to the easy life--and wealth and riches. And the beauty of it all is that it's all done at the expense of your ex, who now is your financial slave. This list is about placing your ex in psychological and financial bondage. Discuss the tactics--and laugh about it--here. |
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EDIT:
Found via Male Matters blog
Divorced men were over eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women (RR=8.36, 95% CI=4.24 to16.38). After taking into account other factors that have been reported to contribute to suicide, divorced men still experienced much increased risks of suicide than divorced women. They were nearly 9.7 times more likely to kill themselves than comparable divorced women (RR=9.68, 95% CI=4.87 to 19.22). Put another way, for every divorced woman that committed suicide, over nine divorced men killed themselves.
[...]
[Co]nsequence, in a divorce settlement, custody of children is more likely to be given to the wife. In the end, the father loses not only his marriage, but his children. The result may be anger at the court system especially in situations wherein the husband feels betrayed because it was the wife that initiated the divorce, or because the courts virtually gave away everything that was previously owned by the ex-husband or the now defunct household to the former wife. Events could spiral into resentment (toward the spouse and ‘‘the system’’), bitterness,
anxiety, and depression, reduced self esteem, and a sense of ‘‘life not worth living’’. As depression and poor mental health are known markers of suicide risk, it may well be that one of the fundamental reasons for the observed association between divorce and suicide in men is the impact of post divorce (court sanctioned) ‘‘arrangements’’.
Clearly this is an issue that needs further investigation. [A J Kposowa]
from here
Wow, these are some scary statistics! I'm going through divorce and trying to keep it uncontested so that things dont get especially ugly. My husband is having a rough time of it. I hope we can agree on the big things soon or else lawyers may need to get involved and I'm worried about if that happens....
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