Men: Why is suicide the answer to business losses?

[Orchidflower]

Can someone explain to me why so many men (and it's never the women) commit suicide when their company is going down? OK, maybe the company's losses began under their watch, but I don't and never have gotten it.
All my life I have heard of men throwing themselves out of windows when the 1929 Stock Market Crash occurred. But why commit suicide over losing money? Is starting over with nothing THAT horrible of an experience? Is their pride so great they can't take the loss of status?
There have been quite a few suicides during this horrid down market cycle already as I see them in the Wall St. Journal more than I care to. I've lost enough during this crash to live on the rest of my life, but suicide? Fat chance, and it wouldn't even occur to me. I may live in DelusionalWorld, but I figure I lost it, so I can make it back again someday with effort and study. And, if nothing else, I can do something else and survive.
Can one of the men explain why a seemingly normal, healthy man would commit suicide over a big loss? This pattern seems to be repeating during this crash way too often. Talk about hopeless people...
I just do not get it.

Freddie Mac official found dead in apparent suicide

 

[CuppaJoe]

Shortly after Executive Life failed, the financial planner who put my pension plan into an Executive Life annuity committed suicide. His partner said that he told him that he couldn't stand the way people looked at him.

 

[MichaelB]

Can one of the men explain why a seemingly normal, healthy man would commit suicide over a big loss? This pattern seems to be repeating during this crash way too often. Talk about hopeless people...
I just do not get it.

Freddie Mac official found dead in apparent suicide

They commit suicide because they suffer from depression. More men than women because more men are in professional positions like this than women - not a good reason.

Many people suffer from depression and no one knows - even those closest to them aren't certain. They only suspect "something" is wrong.

 

[ratface]

I'll take a stab at it no pun intended. First the stories of people jumping out of windows are widely exagerrated from what I've read about that time. But back to your question, IMO men and women are just wired differently. Many men have a hard time dealing with an attack on their pride. It's genetic in some respects. The lion that loses the fight for dominance in the pride must leave with a sort of defeated attitude. Killing oneself avoids the issue. Women on the other hand tend to have large networks of support for dealing with crisis and lean on each other. Some men are to proud to ask for help. Again if we visit the the anology of the lion pride the females rely and depend on each other from food to caring for the young in a community envirenment. Without this animal instinct of rewarding success by both genders we would not be here today. Failure must be discouraged. Suicide is a natural misguided adaptation.

 

[Sam]

Can someone explain to me why so many men (and it's never the women)

Hmm... Somehow I think most guys know the reason, but avoid saying it (taboo?)

Here's [-]my reason[/-] what I heard: Men do it because they can't stand the idea of losing their wife/girlfriend/mistress. In stories, love for a man lasts forever, regardless of his financial situation. In life, well, that's another story.

 

[CuppaJoe]

I'll take a stab at it no pun intended. First the stories of people jumping out of windows are widely exagerrated from what I've read about that time....

I don't know how that pans out statistically but the suicide I mentioned connected with the Executive Life failure was kept very quiet. It did not hit the papers, the partner who told us waited until he could reduce the meeting to only those who had the annuities, both of us. He asked us not to tell anyone and I never mentioned it to any co-workers.

Any ideas about picking up on the signs that a guy might take that option?

 

[haha]

Hmm... Somehow I think most guys know the reason, but avoid saying it (taboo?)

Here's [-]my reason[/-] what I heard: Men do it because they can't stand the idea of losing their wife/girlfriend/mistress. In stories, love for a man lasts forever, regardless of his financial situation. In life, well, that's another story.

Wow. This is a reason I would never have thought of. Hurts to be left, but in truth when a middle aged woman leaves unless her guy is really clueless she is usually the one who loses the most.

My thought is that men are not good at reaching out. As much as possible I try to pattern my social attitudes after women's. The modern world is hard on males. We would maybe be better off as Muslims.

Ha

 

[Frugality_of_Apathy]

Much of it depends on the type of person it is. As a society men are discouraged from depending on others and for the most part soul searching is discouraged. Most men have few friends and after they get married they may not have any personal friends and only have their wife and their married couple friends. Since they never looked inward for strength or outward for support they will put their entire identity into their job and being a provider for their family. If they lose that or fail at it they have lost themselves or have failed at life and the pain they are left with is too much to bear.


There are four times as many male suicides as female suicides. Usually a female suicide is a suicide attempt as a call for help that goes wrong because they just need the connections and affirmation. Men commit suicide in ways that cannot be stopped, shooting themselves in the head or jumping off buildings, because when they are depressed they aren't sad but empty, there's nothing inside and there is nothing to connect to.

 

[CuppaJoe]

Here's some stats:


Suicide Statistics at Suicide.org! Suicide Statistics, Suicide Statistics, Suicide Statistics, Suicide Statistics, Suicide Statistics!

NIMH · Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention

 

[ratface]

Some reading about suicide during the depression.


http://www.iasp.info/pdf/papers/mishara_suicide_and_the_economic_depression.pdf

 

[summer2007]

I know what you are saying.

There are a lot of problems that men have that get zero attention from the media....it's not politically correct to have men as a victim of anything.

I'm just going off the top of my head here so these figures might be off but it's something like 80% suicides are male.

Now if it was the other way around and it was females Oprah would have every other show on this topic...so would dr phil and every other show on every network.

If this was ANY other group other than men this would be a national crisis...but because it's men no one cares.

Also something like 90% of workplace deaths are male....you never hear that statistic when anyone talks about equal pay. A lot of these jobs are very stressful.

And the justice system is so skewed against males it is not even funny. Something like 93% of all the people incarcerated in the U.S. are male! And the U.S. has far and away the highest incarceration rate in the world.

If anyone has even known a female criminal. I'm sure you have seen the blatant double standard.

College is supposed to be like only 40% male now.

Bottom line is that men have a lot of problems and stress in their lives but there is no real effort to help them.

Jim

 

[ziggy29]

Nature or nurture? Perhaps both -- probably both, IMO.

I suspect body chemistry and hormones play a part in behavior -- but so too do social expectations placed on us by gender. I mean, I could easily ask women why crying is the answer to some of their life's problems. But even if there is *some* truth to that in terms of gender tendencies and there may be nature and nurture components there, isn't that a slightly offensive stereotype? Why, then, wouldn't the stereotype about men and violent, even criminal, tendencies also be potentially offensive?

 

[Bestwifeever]

I think it is purely statistical--what do you think the ratio is of men to women in higher level business positions (the C's of a company in the areas where they are the decision makers)? For example, the person at Freddie Mac replaced another man in his position. That increases the odds that it would be a man in that position making the unfortunate decision to end his life for whatever reason.

Take a look at the business section and circle all the names of men in red and the women in blue. Look at their positions within their firms. That is your answer imho.

 

[calmloki]

High powered male titans of industry don't avail themselves of head shrinkers. No excuse for that in today's interweb world:
What's Your Problem? - The two-second psychologist gets to the root of the what ails ya.

 

[ziggy29]

High powered male titans of industry don't avail themselves of head shrinkers. No excuse for that in today's interweb world:

Some of it has to do with how boys and girls tend to be raised and what they observe around them.

Boys see that men are "supposed to be" strong, they're supposed to be successful breadwinners and providers, defined by their careers and their earning power.

Girls see that women are "supposed to be" domestic engineers and nurturers, defined by the success of their family life and ability to maintain a happy, clean and well-fed household.

And it can cause a crisis and a feeling of misery and failure for many if they can't fulfill it.

To some degree I think this [-]toxic stereotypical brainwashing[/-] imprinting just catches one generation after another. And it winds up being self-perpetuating, as if it were a perpetual motion machine. Thankfully, in some ways this stuff is starting to be challenged, but old habits and expectations ingrained in our heads for many generations dies hard.

 

[ChrisC]

More female poets appear to committ suicide than male poets. Is that because there are more female poets than male poets? I read the obituary of Deborah Digges, the latest suicide among poets, and it just seemed she lost the will to live after her husband's death. And her act of suicide was not the "typical" method of choice for women.

Clinical depression can cause suicide. (BTW, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, is a riveting study of depression with its linkeage to suicide.)

I think they when you get well publicized incidents of suicide in the media, typically it might lead to a spike up in the incident rate in the general population -- the publicity might push some people over the edge. The influence of media reporting of the suicide of...[Int J Epidemiol. 2007] - PubMed Result

I'm not sure anyone can really make sense of any correlations in the incident rate and method of suicide and discern whether there are gender specific reasons for the differences. I'm always troubled by teenage suicides because I think those are the most easily avoided with proper counselling.

 

[steve88]

Are the japanese (world war II)pioneer in this type of action?

 

[FinanceDude]

Historically, there was more pressure on males to PROVIDE for their families. Think about "It's a Wonderful Life", the main character was certainly suicidal. Without a vision from divine intervention the movie would have ended with him committing suicide....so it appears it has been a problem and a concern for some time.....

 

[CuppaJoe]

Regarding the stats, does anyone know if or how they factor in the suicides that are recorded as due to some other cause such as accident so that the family won't have the stigma, burial can be in consecrated ground, the insurance will pay, and so on.

I doubt that I am the only one here who knows deep down that someone, say, committed suicide by automobile.

 

[Texas Proud]

I think it is a bunch of poppycock.... some people commit suicide, some don't...

Remember the stories of the oil catter? He would make millions and lose millions.. but kept doing what he wanted to do... some went bankrupt a few times, but still kept going..

So we hear a few stories about someone committing suicide that is in a position of power.... and wonder why he did it from the pressures or whatever... but IMO he would have committed suicide at some time in his life for some reason... we just try and make it make sense in OUR mind, which of course we can not unless we are suicidal (did I spell that correctly?)...

 

[saluki9]

I'm no psychologist but I would guess it has a lot to do with men identifying themselves by their profession. When you lose that job, business, etc your identity is gone and it makes it easier to see your life having little value.

 

[CuppaJoe]

David Kellermann,... was found dead at his home early Wednesday in what police said was an apparent suicide....
The police would not release the exact cause of death, but spokesman Eddy Azcarate said Kellermann's body was found in the basement.

How routine is it to disclose apparent suicide but not the exact cause? I wonder why they couldn't keep the apparent suicide part confidential as well? Maybe we could lighten this up with ideas like they didn't contribute to the policemen's ball. Naw, doesn't work.

 

[saluki9]

How routine is it to disclose apparent suicide but not the exact cause? I wonder why they couldn't keep the apparent suicide part confidential as well? Maybe we could lighten this up with ideas like they didn't contribute to the policemen's ball. Naw, doesn't work.

My cop friend explained that they report suicides so the neighbors don't panic thinking there is a killer on the loose.

 

[Orchidflower]

Are men CONSCIOUS of how difficult society has made it for them I wonder?
As a woman I know many of us are conscious of the expectations that society has placed on us. The woman who isn't nurturing (which is expected of women) tends to be somewhat of an oddball among women (my apologies to all female board members who don't consider themselves nurturing).
So men are aware of how they are "supposed" to act as a man, but are men aware of how difficult their role is in life? Very unfair situation for men I've always thought.

 

[Martha]

Regarding the stats, does anyone know if or how they factor in the suicides that are recorded as due to some other cause such as accident so that the family won't have the stigma, burial can be in consecrated ground, the insurance will pay, and so on.

I doubt that I am the only one here who knows deep down that someone, say, committed suicide by automobile.

Our local obituary euphemism is "died suddenly."