Die by Suicide: Does Gender Matter?
Abstract
Suicide is a complex phenomenon, involving the interaction between genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and environmental factors. In this sense, gender is one of the most important determinants of suicidal behavior (Canetto & Lester 1998, Bilsker & White 2011, Barroso 2019). While accumulating empirical evidence confirms that men consistently die by suicide at higher rates than women across regions and ethnic and socioeconomic groups, just few explanatory frameworks have been developed to account for this persistent pattern (Bilsker & White 2011). One of the reasons is because very often studies treat male and female behavior and emotions in an oppositional way and uses sex as an independent variable in statistical analyses. In this sense, the aim of this manuscript is raising public awareness and bring together interested people in understanding and preventing suicide from a gender framework, especially practitioners of mental health and policy makers. Unlike sex, which is constituted by anatomophysiological differences, gender is a historical and social construction (Canetto & Lester 1998, Bourdieu 2002). The socialization and learning of social roles, behaviors, and meanings prescribed for men (masculinity) and women (femininity) is a process through which human subjectivity is differentially constituted throughout the different life stages. The socially sanctioned expectations, values, qualities and roles that are taken on by subjects, shape the ways consider…
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