To the National Editor
of the National Post
This
letter is NOT intended for publication.
For A. M. Owens,
Managing Editor, News,
The National Post
18 March 2010
Ms. Owens,
“Ivy League
Distress” on A3 of the National Post* cited four Cornell students
who recently committed suicide. According to Cornell U President
David Skorton, “ … suicide among young people is a national health
crisis.” (*18 March 2010, from The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/education/17cornell.html)
But two women students apparently
disagree: Deirdre Mulligan and “Nicole Huynh … does not think the
stress of studies pushed him to the edge, but rather troubles from
early in life … his mind was set and he was going to do whatever he
wanted to do.”
Omitted from that article and almost
every article on suicide is that over 77% of US suicides and in
Canada over 80% of suicides, are male. Some analyses suggest
that social stresses, drastically escalated on boys and men, in the
past 40 years may be driving the escalating suicide rates.
You may object to an intrusion of
sexual politics into these tragedies. After all, it’s not as though
the suicides are mostly female. But as the only author published in
the Canadian mass media on suicide rates by sex, the data shows that
avoiding sex analysis and retention of a female counseling approach,
will probably fuel the increase of male suicides.
Today in Canada, nine males and two
females will commit suicide. That’s almost a suicide every two hours.
In the USA, 16 females and 68 males will commit suicide. The UN -
WHO suicide criteria predispose to under-counting.
A multiple – part investigative
series could be written in a newspaper on this preventable loss of
lives. But they’re mostly only men.
Jeffrey Asher
Member of FathersCan, Ottawa