In a recent TES column, the Department for Education’s former mental health tsar, Natasha Devon, argued that statistics suggesting higher rates of depression in young women and girls were misleading, and proposed that depression in males was under-diagnosed. While discussion of mental health issues is welcome, Devon’s logic and supporting evidence were shaky in a number of places.

Supposedly, higher male suicide and addiction rates are indicative of suppressed mental health problems in men not being picked up by conventional depression statistics. I must stress that in almost all studies, both suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts are higher in women. Men, however, are much more likely to successfully kill themselves, a fact which researchers partly attribute to greater male usage of more violent and effective suicide methods, such as shooting and hanging (women, by contrast, are more likely to try relatively ineffective but less violent methods such as poisoning with pills).

Devon also describes “a catastrophic trend in young men taking their own lives”. While not exactly stated, this rather implies increasing suicide rates for men in the United Kingdom. In fact, the opposite is true and suicide rates for both sexes are substantially down since 1981, and even more substantially when compared with 1988. Male suicide rates did rise between 2007 and 2013, but fell significantly in 2014. Female suicide rates are also at a historic low, but have ticked up slightly since 2010. Devon further states that “the danger zone age-wise for male suicide is between 24-35”. This is simply incorrect and the ONS data for 2014 (released in February 2016) clearly shows that the highest suicide rate is found amongst men aged 45-59 (23.9 deaths per 100,000). The highest suicide rate for women is also found amongst this age bracket. Males under 30 have the lowest suicide risk of all men (see here for all data).

I must stress that just because suicide constitutes a high percentage of male deaths in young age brackets, it doesn’t mean that we are living through a youth suicide epidemic. In previous decades, men who died young would largely have done so because of illness, and industrial and automobile accidents. Thankfully, we live in a much safer society and premature death across the board is down. When that happens, it’s not so surprising that suicide suddenly becomes predominant as a cause of death amongst young men, even though suicide rates have fallen in recent decades.

Blaming ‘toxic masculinity’

Lastly, I take issue with Devon’s fundamental model of male suicide, which argues that because of an amorphous construct often called “toxic masculinity”, young men bottle up their negative emotions until they kill themselves or lash out violently. Again, the evidence for this is dubious. It seems very unlikely that masculinity got any more toxic during the 1980s, when male suicide rose to a peak in 1988 (21.4 per 100,000 as compared with 16.8 per 100,000 in 2014). I suggest that economic changes resulting in rising unemployment are more likely culprits. Again, it seems not unlikely that the same factor resulted in rising male suicide between 2007 and 2013. There was a substantial drop in suicide deaths amongst men during both world wars, and I doubt this was because masculinity got any less toxic. It seems more likely that many suicidal men decided to focus on fighting the war rather than killing themselves.

In fact, sex-typed masculine traits such as dominance and assertiveness are routinely linked to higher levels of functioning, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction, and are generally viewed as protective against internalising mental health disorders. A recent study found that higher emotionality was protective against stress for females but not for males, indicating that coping mechanisms that work for one sex may not work for the other. Female voices must not be allowed to predominate in the debate over male mental health, lest we come to model psychological wellbeing entirely along feminine lines. That would be a severe mistake likely to make matters worse.

Until recently, I was sceptical of claims of a mental health crisis in schools. Recent data is more persuasive, however, and I now agree with Devon that there is some good evidence of increasing psychological distress amongst young people, young women most especially.

The large rise in anti-depressant usage by children over the past decade fits well with the latest Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, which specifically notes that young women have emerged as a key high-risk group. I do not doubt that aspects of modernity play a role here, though doubtless Devon and I would disagree as to specifics. I applaud her unrelenting focus on the psychological wellbeing of young people, but argue that her understanding of male psychological dysfunction and suicide patterns is flawed.

Andrew Sabisky is a freelance writer and independent researcher

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