Men commit suicide, women attempt it. Is it a call for attention?
In 1998, Canetto and Sakinofsky suggested what they referred to as “The gender paradox in suicide”: in western countri es women have higher rates of thinking and behaving in a suicidal way, but deaths from suicide are typically in men. The most superficial explanation, already rejected because of its simplicity and scant explanatory capacity, is that women tend more to call attention rather than really commit suicide. It is men who show a more “real” conduct: when they decide to commit suicide they do so: if women were really determined to kill themselves, they would also “really” do so. But if we use the SGBA Sex and Gender –based analysis) clear differences are revealed in the experience undergone, the behaviours adopted and the social roles of men and women: Moreover, the prejudices which are implicit in many of the diagnostic tools come to the fore. And this is not a trivial matter since in ad dition to awareness of one of the mechanisms underlying the behaviour of human beings, namely suicide; we are playing with the effectiveness of preventive measures against suicide. In fact, to be able to tackle them effectively, we need to be able to try to understand the mechanisms of this gender paradox. Expectations play an important role in manifesting this paradox; it becomes more intense in communities and groups in which different conduct is expected...
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