Men are more likely to commit suicide when they decide to – Health expert

Dr. Isaac Newman Arthur, a medical doctor and clinical psychologist, has disclosed that the possibility of a man committing suicide once he has thought of it is higher as compared to a woman.

Speaking on eTV Ghana’s male talk show, Men’s Lounge with host, Nana Yaw Odame, he posited that relationship issues affect men significantly and even more than one would imagine.

He explained that when men are being affected by relationship problems, they seldom talk about it and look for other ways like drinking, overdosing on drugs, illicit sex among other methods to cope with it, hence when they exhaust these escape plans, then they begin to get extremely depressed and suicidal.

According to him, since they have already exhausted all escape plans, they have nothing else to turn to when they get depressed and suicidal, hence, the possibility of them going through with suicide is higher.

“You’ll see a man messing up at work and you may go into it only to realize that this man has some problems at home. There are men who even overstay at work because they wouldn’t want to go home to meet someone who would distress them. Even when they talk about their issues, they won’t talk about their marital problems and all these things increase their risk for all kinds of medical problems and mental health issues that affect the life of men on all levels”, he said.

Dr. Newman concluded, “if you look at the causes of death, suicide is one of the leading causes of death amongst men and when a woman wants to commit suicide, they really just want the attention so when you give them that, they won’t go through with it but when a man wants to commit suicide, he’s likely to do it because he has exhausted all his coping strategies”.