The Department for Health is failing to target suicide prevention work at men say experts, according to a report on male suicide BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.

Jane Powell of the male suicide prevention charity CALM said:

“It’s cultural as much as anything else. We don’t really see men as needing help in anyway or as being vulnerable unless they’ve got some additional asset or qualification which means we should look at them as needing any further assistance.

“And that runs through our entire society which says that failure and being weak is something that women’s do and being strong is what men do. And so when we look at the suicide prevention strategy where it says and mentions that men are at higher risk than women, it then goes on to look at what other factors like ethnicity, sexuality or anything else that bring that kind of added qualification as for why we should look at a particular group as needing anything.

“We equate manhood as being invulnerable so we can’t allocate resources in that area because they’re men. A man who is depressed is more likely to behave aggressively, to self medicate, to have anger problems and to end up in prison than end up getting any kind of mental health help.”

The Psychologist Martin Seager, who was also interviewed on the programme said that we have to “remove the blind eye we’re turning to it because in 104 out of 105 countries that we have statistics for the male suicide rate is much higher so it isn’t purely a cultural thing it seems to be an embedded evolutionary mind and body issue for men.

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