© Niall Carson/PA
A Samaritans' vigil in Dublin. The charity, with Bristol University, is looking at the impact of the internet on vulnerable people.
A Samaritans' vigil in Dublin. The charity, with Bristol University, is looking at the impact of the internet on vulnerable people.
The male suicide rate in the UK was 3½ times that of women in 2012, the highest ratio between the sexes in more than 30 years, official figures show .
The data was published as the University of Bristol and the Samaritans announced the launch of a project to investigate the impact of the internet on those with suicidal thoughts amid growing concerns about its effect on vulnerable people.
There were 4,590 male suicides registered in 2012, compared with 1,391 female, equating to 18.2 per 100,000 men and 5.2 per 100,000 women, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
When the data series began, in 1981, the male suicide rate was 1.9 times that for women. But the rate for women halved, with a much smaller decrease (from 19.8 in 1981) for men.
Clare Wyllie, head of policy and research at Samaritans, said the figures showed that the highest suicide rate was among men aged 40 to 44, at 25.9 deaths per 100,000. This bore out the charity's own studies, which have found middle-aged men of low socioeconomic status to be most at risk. "They will grow up expecting by the time they reach mid-life they'll have a wife who will look after them and a job for life in a male industry," she said. "In reality they may find that they reach middle age in a very different position. Society has this masculine ideal that people are expecting to live up to. Lots of that has to do with being a breadwinner. When men don't live up to that it can be quite devastating for them."
