Twice as many divorced men kill themselves, compared to single and married ones. Every day in Canada, eight men take their own lives.
Men commit 80 per cent of suicides in the country. In Ontario, suicides
account for more injury-related deaths among men — about 800 each year —
than any other category.
Why do men kill themselves? One factor that statistics point to is a
significant connection between these suicides and divorce. The national
suicide rate among divorced men was 41.2 per 100,000, according to a 1995
Statistics Canada report, the most recent of its kind. This is about
four times the overall national suicide rate and more than twice as high as
the rate for single or married men. The figure excludes Quebec, which has
the highest suicide rate among divorced men in the country, 46.6 per 100,000.
Despite the numbers in the report, which was not conducted to make any
specific connections, there has been no research since to explore the
relationship between male suicide and divorce.
'We find that marriage and family is a protective factor, more so for men
than women,' says psychiatrist Paul Links, chair of the suicide studies
program at the University of Toronto. 'Difficult divorces or loss of
children certainly fit the profile of loss that leads to suicide.'
Divorced men are vulnerable to physical illness as well: They are more
likely to die of natural causes than those who remain married, according to
a U.S. study published this week. Of 10,904 men who were married at the
beginning of the study, those who stayed married were less likely to die
from a number of causes, especially cardiac disease, than those who
divorced, the study found.
Links recognizes the potential connection between male suicide and
divorce,
but he's reluctant to isolate divorce as the sole factor responsible for
the high suicide rate among men. 'It's usually not one event that leads to
suicide,' he says. 'One event, such as a divorce, might serve as a
trigger, but it's usually a series of problems that lead to suicide.'
That was the case with Bob Laplante, who tried to take his life 18
months after separating from his wife in 1993. His brother stopped him and
psychiatrists later told Laplante that his depression could be traced to
events much earlier in his life.
'The separation and the guilt after it was what pushed me over the edge,
but I had been eating pills, tranquilizers and Valium, like candy for
years,' says Laplante, 43. 'My doctors said my depression, when I
started drinking and taking drugs, goes back to the death of my father when I
was 15.'
Laplante says the guilt over abandoning his wife and child for a life of
drugs and alcohol eventually became too much to bear. After his first
suicide attempt, he walked in and out of doctors' offices for five
years, collecting a shopping list of antidepressants, tranquilizers and other
drugs that allowed him to carelessly self-medicate.
'There is a concern that men are less likely to use mental health
services,' Links says. 'Men don't reach out for help or don't feel
existing services meet their specific needs. This might be a factor for the
significantly higher number of male suicides compared to the number for
women.'
Unable to find help beyond the growing collection of drugs doctors
prescribed, Laplante again tried to commit suicide last year. 'Luckily I
threw up after taking a handful of pills and then passed out.'
In September, after doctors finally recognized the severity of
Laplante's condition, he was admitted into the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph.
'They approached my treatment by looking at my drug and alcohol problem and my
concurrent depression after my separation. It was the first time I was
able to get real help. It was the only place that really offered counselling
for someone in my situation. I haven't had a suicidal thought since I was
released last October.'
Finding help had also been difficult for divorcé Gerald Gauthier, who
speaks of the isolation that forced him to deal with his depression
alone.
'Suicide was one of the options that went through my mind. I seriously
considered it,' says Gauthier, 53, talking about the effects of his
separation from his wife in 1995. He says it was the inability to see
his children that sent him into a severe depression. 'At one point I thought
I'd be worth more dead than alive to my kids. I thought if I died at
least my children could collect life insurance and would be able to move on. I
don't know if my situation applies to people who have amicable divorces
but certainly when there's a lot of conflict it's hard for men like me to go
for support.'
Though he admits to his own 'male hang-up' about appearing weak,
Gauthier says that when pushed to the edge of depression, divorced men are
willing to reach out.
But there is almost no provincial or federal funding for social services
specifically targeted at dealing with issues they face. No funds are
provided for male divorce counselling, transitional shelter beds for
divorced men (the Ontario government provides $12.4 million annually for
emergency shelter beds for adult men in Toronto), temporary housing or
telephone hotlines to meet the needs of men going through separation or
divorce.
'There was nowhere to go,' says Gauthier, who followed his ex-wife and
children to Toronto after they left Montreal. 'It was really hard to
find help.'
After his divorce in 1997, William Levy, 53, says he was perceived by
many as a 'deadbeat dad,' the type of stigma he says is constantly
perpetuated by media coverage of messy high-profile divorce cases and by pop-culture
portrayals of divorced men.
'The moment you get a divorce, men become the pariah of society,' says
Levy. 'Why did I nearly take my life several times? Because they took my
kids from me.'
The problem, Levy says, is that there are plenty of 'deadbeat dads' out
there who give a bad name to divorced men who truly do feel helpless and
unworthy, unable to mend their most important relationships. He says
that when responsible fathers are painted with the same dark strokes, the
effect only compounds their despair.
When Darrin White, a railway engineer from Prince George, B.C., hanged
himself two years ago, his suicide was portrayed by the media in two
ways: one columnist showed little sympathy for the divorced father of four who
lobbied, unsuccessfully, in court to have his child support payments
reduced. A news story depicted the death of a man who felt isolated and
helpless in a country that continues to fail the nearly 3,000 men who
commit suicide each year.
After many disparaging reports in the media, White's 14-year-old
daughter Ashlee wrote to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: 'I know my father was a
good man and a good father ... He obviously reached a point where he could
see that justice was beyond his reach and for reasons that only God will
know, decided that taking his life was the only way to end his suffering.'
Collingwood-based author and libertarian Wendy McElroy, editor of
ifeminists.com, says if society, particularly the legal system, doesn't
recognize the relationship between male suicide and divorce, the numbers
will rise.
'There has been very little research to find out how alienated men feel
after a complicated divorce and after losing custody in courts. But when
you go through the research that's there, you come across story after
story about men who wrote notes about their divorces or were clutching court
orders while they committed suicide,' says McElroy, whose anthology
Liberty For Women: Freedom And Feminism For The 21st Century, will be published
this year.
'The men's movement is at the same stage as feminism was in the '60s.
There needs to be more societal support for men's issues, funding for services
that have done so much to help women. And men, rightfully so, are now
looking at family courts and saying there's something that's
procedurally wrong with a system that has swung so far in favour of women. There
seemsto be a precipitous increase in male suicides within countries that have
adopted this feminist model of family law.'
Richard Stone, a lawyer who practises family law and his wife Paula
Stone, who manages her husband's firm in Toronto, agree with McElroy. They have
dealt with dozens of male clients over the past two decades who have
falleninto depression after painful divorce and custody cases.
'One case,' says Paula Stone, 'involved a child who wasn't even born and
the mother said the ex-husband couldn't have anything to do with the
child, but expected and got full child support from her ex after their child
was born. The anxiety and the alienation imposed on these gentlemen is
extreme. They become very depressive.'
Richard Stone says family law has changed drastically over the past two
decades. 'Women can reopen a spousal support case any time. It's very
rare, if the wife doesn't want to give up custody, that men will be granted
much more than visitation rights. For fathers who were involved very closely
with the raising of their kids, it's really hard to get their heads
around the fact that they'll only be able to see their kids every other
weekend. They get really depressed and they have absolutely no place to go for
help. I often suggest they seek counselling.'
Laplante says his reluctance to seek help was difficult to overcome.
'I thought people would think I was weak-minded,' he says, 'and it was
difficult to deal with the guilt. I knew I walked out on my family. I
just didn't want to deal with it.
'The second time I tried to kill myself, after I woke up in my own
vomit, I knew I had to get help. I thought being alive, even if I thought I was a
bad husband and father, was a sign that I still deserve to live.'
