New Research Says Three Times As Many Men Are Considering Suicide Than Previously Thought

Julia Gillard joined The Hot Breakfast this morning in her role as Chair of the Board of Directors at Beyond Blue and explained that new research shows that three times as many men are contacting emergency services due to suicidal thoughts as previously thought.

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“We are releasing today with some great partners — Movember, Monash University — some new research into the incidents of suicide attempts and thoughts of suicide by men, and this has been a big study involving ambulance officers,” former PM Gillard said.

“They have coded and provided information about the sorts of scenes that they go to and the sorts of people they deal with, and in doing all of that we’ve worked out that around 30,000 Australian men each year have contact with ambulance officers because they are thinking of suicide or have attempted suicide, and that is three times more than we thought before.

“We’d been working off hospital numbers and that was giving us around 10,000 each year.”

The discrepancy in the figures came from the hospital figures recording injury and illness that resulted from the circumstances surrounding the suicidal thoughts or attempt.

“The difference between those two numbers — 30,000 and 10,000 — is ambulance officers have been getting the complete information about the scene,” Gillard said.

“So if you imagine late at night, a man’s been thinking of suicide, maybe he’s also had a considerable drink, maybe as a result of that he’s fallen and hurt himself, the ambulance officers get the full picture, they know about the suicidal thoughts.

“Whereas, that man goes to hospital, they’ll tick the box ‘broken leg, treated broken leg’.”

Gillard said that one of the biggest challenges faced is that men don’t feel they can talk openly about suicide or their mental health.

“One of the big messages we’re trying to get through is ‘you can talk about suicide’,” the former prime minister said.

“I used to think that if you had a friend that was in some sort of distress and you had a conversation with them and you used the word ‘suicide’ that the risk would be that you somehow put the idea into… their head.

“But we’ve done a lot of research now and that’s not true.

“You can actually reach to a friend in need and say something like ‘are you thinking of killing yourself, I’m really concerned about you,’ and the evidence shows that supportive conversations make a difference.”

Gillard explained that men often refuse to talk up due to a fear of stigma or appearing weak.

“When we look at why is this men, why is it disproportionately men in those suicide statistics, one big thing we think is that men are less likely to reach out for help,” she said.

“So that’s that you know strong, silent type, I can take it, I don’t want to let the family down, I don’t want to let my teammates down if I play footy… I just want to be the one that can always take it on the chin.

“I think we all understand that is our history, but in today’s world there is help around and if you ask for it, it can make a big, big impact.”

Wil Anderson outlined his own experiences with suicide.

“This is something that is particularly close to me in this last year, the team here know but I haven’t really talked about this much on air,” he said.

“I’ve lost two people very close to me in my life to suicide in the last 12 months… the ramifications of it on our entire community and our friendship group and their families that they left behind and all these things are still every day things that we think about.

“I think as friends when you’ve lost people, the thing that you keep coming back to is what could have I done more?

“What could have we done? How could we have approached them in a way.

“So not just getting to the people who are feeling like this who are listening this morning, but also to the friends of the people who are feeling like this… often when somebody’s feeling like this, the first thing they do is want to push away their friends.”

Gillard said that it was important for those left behind not to take on too much guilt, but to be aware of the signs.

“It’s very common for people to feel guilt as well as distress when they’ve lost someone to suicide,” she said.

“You can’t take all of that on your shoulders in the sense that not everybody gives an indication that they are thinking about suicide.

“But sometimes people do, sometimes it’s behavioural, people start to withdraw from loved ones, from friends.

“They stop doing things that they used to really love and enjoy, maybe some big disruptions to sleeping patterns to eating patterns, maybe more express things like giving away prized possessions, even making statements like ‘you’d all be better off without me’.

“These are all warning signs, and as tough as it is, that’s the right moment to initiate a conversation and to try and get people to seek help.”

Julia Gillard also discussed her life after politics and more.

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Mental health professionals are available at the Beyond Blue Support Service via phone 24/7 on 1300 22 4636 or via www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support for online chat (3PM – 12AM AEST or email responses within 24 hours), or you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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