A leading men's health researcher says a more gender specific approach is needed to help reduce suicide figures across Australia.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), on average five men and one woman commit suicide each day in Australia.

The ABS found more men die from suicide each year than the total road accident death toll.

Professor John MacDonald from the University of Western Sydney says more needs to be done to prevent men at risk from falling into despair.

"Suicide is a gendered issue, in fact it is many more men who tragically take their lives than women," he said.

"By calling suicide a gender issue I'm trying to draw attention to the fact that perhaps it's been neglected a bit.

"With respect, if it was five women a day and one man dying I think people would recognise more readily that it would be a gendered issue.

"That issue hasn't really been addressed in Australia, that it is mainly men that kill themselves."

Professor MacDonald has addressed a conference in Canberra promoting male health and well-being, as part of Men's Health Week.

He warns against labelling suicidal people as mentally ill.

"Many people - many men - take their own lives as an accumulation of many stressful life events coming together on top of one another in a cycle that seems to the person involved, inescapable," he said.

"In Australia we label too quickly things as mentally ill or even depression.

"Of course depression is reality, but we should be careful about medicalising something that I say often is despair. We need to de-clinicalise it, make it more real, that people feel despair and unable to deal with the horrible things they feel they have to face.

"It is important that people do not use medical words to try to advertently or inadvertently hide from social factors which are behind lots of suicides."