A much more modest set of claims, Alison, and it has the advantage 
that it can be tested. There's just a lot that we don't know about 
our species. Best not to jump to explanations.

Let me complicate this a bit. Suicide is not one thing--there are 
different kinds of suicide. One class of suicides, probably the 
majority, are impulsive, using the means that happen to be at hand. 
Acting on impulse with a gun is likely to get you killed. Sylvia 
Plath's suicide was of one or another of two different kinds: she may 
have fantasized a last-minute rescue, as in a hystrionic suicide 
attempt, and probably some pill deaths are of this kind--you get to 
make a statement of the nastiest passive-aggressive kind, and you get 
to survive it. Or, as her elaborate planning suggests, she may have 
been deep in an obsessive fantasy state, acting almost automatically 
with little thought about the consequence. Which means that she 
probably would have tried it again if she'd been interrupted. There 
are suicides directed by voices. There are suicides as rational 
decisions to escape unbearable pain. One could go on.

It's not uncommon for men. as well as women, to experience depression 
when the kids grow up. When Carlos hit 16 and started having his own 
life I felt like I had died. Aside from missing him, suddenly I had 
the leisure to ask about the meaning of my life. Hard to do when you 
have to make breakfast. In that state of depression it's not 
difficuly to imagine a momentary impulse to do oneself in. Add 
divorce, the sense that one's work has reached a dead end, and the 
awareness of aging.

Occam's razor comes into play, I think.


At 07:25 PM 3/31/2006, you wrote:
>On 1/4/06 9:14 AM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Whenever anyone says "I don't think there's any doubt" it's a pretty
> > good sign that there's a lot of doubt. Personally, I think this is
> > nonsense, but I could be persuaded by evidence rather than theorizing
> > and pronouncement. There are simply a lot of variables here.
>
>Sure. Maybe I am only speaking from an Australian perspective, where male
>suicide rates are among the highest in the world, and particularly grave
>among middle aged men, especially men who have divorced. Women, on the other
>hand, tend to do much better emotionally after divorce (though they tend to
>be financially worse off).  I've read several studies which suggest that
>this suicide rate is because traditional notions of masculinity inhibit men
>from getting help with issues like depression, or even talking about things
>that trouble them, because men are just supposed to cope.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com