By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Sept. 13, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- The death of a wife hits young white men especially hard, raising their likelihood of suicide by 17 times, says a new study.

Young black men are also more likely to commit suicide after losing their wives, but women seem to adjust much better to widowhood, researchers found.

"If we add up all the young men, we're talking about a couple thousand men who would be at higher risk for suicide if they're recently widowed," says study co-author Jane Pearson, chairwoman of the National Institute of Mental Health's suicide research consortium. "Can we alert people who work with men in this situation? That's the question."

Suicide remains a major killer in the United States, more so than homicide. An estimated 28,000 people killed themselves in 2000, making suicide the 11th leading cause of death.

Men and women look at suicide differently, however. Men are less likely to make suicide attempts, but more likely to actually kill themselves. Women often try to commit suicide with drugs and are more frequently rescued, Pearson says.

In her study, Pearson and a colleague examined federal statistics about suicide from 1991-1996. The results appear in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

White widowers aged 20 to 34 were 17 times more likely to commit suicide than their married counterparts, and black widowers were nine times more likely to kill themselves. Widows were much less likely to commit suicide.

The researchers report that as many as one in 400 black and white young widowers will die by suicide in any given year, compared with one in 9,000 American married men. The researchers estimate that at least one in 100 young widowers would try to commit suicide in the years after the loss of a wife.

Pearson suggests men may be less likely than women to seek help while suffering from bereavement and depression. Men are seen as "macho," she says. "They don't like to go to the doctor generally."

Studies also suggest women may do worse immediately after a spouse's death but recuperate better over time, Pearson says.

Daniel Romer, a suicide expert and research director for the Institute for Adolescent Risk Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, echoes Pearson's theories.

"Men seem to have more difficulty adjusting to loss of a spouse at any age," he says. "They are more prone to depression following spousal loss and this could be a factor. In addition, losing a spouse at an early age could be especially risky to young men because they are not seen as much by doctors and may find it uncomfortable to seek help for their depression. They are also more likely than older men to use drugs, and this might also increase the risk."

Both Pearson and Romer suggest that mental-health professionals should be aware of the special risks facing young widowers. Funeral directors and hospital workers could receive special training, Pearson says.

Counselors typically "try to get the person over the extreme unhappiness and desire to end his or her pain by thinking more positively about the future," Romer says.

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