It might appear to anyone reading the news that we are suffering from an epidemic of mental illness. Hardly a day goes by without a new statistic – or the repetition of the scary fact that suicide levels among men are now three times those for women.

Why might the suicide rate in men be so high, and are men more at-risk due to their biology or their environment? Is it nature, or nurture?

To begin to answer that question, we need to understand that men's mental health problems are often the result of stress – either workplace or other forms. Men don’t “cope” well with stress. As well as being more likely to commit suicide, they are also less likely to seek help for their condition. Biological research suggests this is because many men have an increased response to cortisol, the stress hormone, compared to women. Men appear to overreact to their bodies' cortisol production, intensifying the ill-effects of this natural hormone.

Why do men have this aggravated response? Surely, with the obvious negative consequences of it, wouldn’t our evolution have altered men’s biology to rid them of this heightened response to cortisol, thus reducing levels of depression and suicide?