Male suicide: status, society and a big unspoken issue

By Colin Hawes, Claims & Medical Underwriting Manager – UK Employee Benefits, Generali

Suicide prevention probably doesn’t appear at the top of the priority list, if at all, when it comes to developing a wellbeing strategy.

It’s an issue that’s rarely discussed in public, or private for that matter, so you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s not a very big issue at all. But when you consider that men aged 20 – 49 in the UK are more likely to die from suicide than prostate cancer or coronary heart disease, its relevance becomes a lot more apparent.

In December, the Office for National Statistics published its latest data on suicides in the UK, based on 2016 registrations. It found that after many years of increases, suicide among men and women had fallen by 3.6% from 2015 – 2016: the largest decrease seen since 1995 – 1996. The current age-standardised annual suicide rate for the UK is 1.6 per 10,000 for males and 0.5 per 10,000 for females.