Men comprise the majority of those who die of suicide [1]. This pattern is often taken as an indication that suicide is a male behaviour and a male problem, and that men are naturally and perhaps inevitably more prone to suicide than women (see Canetto’s studies in 1992–3 and 2021 [2,3] and Kushner’s 1993 study [4] for critical analyses of this idea).

Suicide, however, is not always more common in men than in women when the data is examined over time, by country and within country by age groups. For example, as recently as 2012, men were less likely to die of suicide than women in China, Indonesia, Iraq and Pakistan [5]. These countries compose a major proportion of the global population, so their suicide patterns cannot be dismissed as minor exceptions. Also, currently, in some countries, men are less likely to die of suicide than women in certain age groups.