If you're having trouble understanding what this map means, it means that the suicide rate for men is higher than for women everywhere, notably 5 to 6 times higher in Eastern Europe and Russia, and 8 times higher in a couple of Central American countries and West Africa.
I wonder what makes men the world over decide that suicide is the best option.
I have no way to know the lived experience of women, but I have observed since about 4 years of age that the buck stops with me. I, and I suspect the vast majority of men, have no backstop - If I have any problem that I can't fix myself, or can't pay money to get assistance with, I am fucked.
I hear anecdotally that women are more likely to tell people about suicidal ideation... Does this imply that women have better results using social networks to move past the stressors or illness behind that ideation?
Best case if I was feeling like I couldn't bear to keep living and told someone, maybe a family member would have me committed for my own good. Then after the imprisonment, I am also unemployed and still have no one with the bandwidth to help me deal with whatever issues I was having.
I'm a man, USA. In my personal experience, which doesn't mean very much, I've noticed that men seem unable to accept catastrophy. They try to reason or wiggle a way out of it. Woman seem more at ease when dealing with horrible events.
If I had to guess, it is a difference in perception and experience. Perhaps men are groomed to be "providers, problem solvers," and so they despair at unsolvable problems, while women are told not to "overreact," and to "support" others in times of crisis. Like a weird inverted effect of patriarchal society.
Wasn't paying attention and misread the map at first. It's showing male suicides / female suicides. So a green nation would be 1:1 equal suicide by gender. So every nation has a strong bias towards male suicide, some much more so than others.
It would be interesting to find a way to also represent the overall rate. Some of these countries really stand out for their high male:female ratio even though their overall rates are not particularly high.
So, while there's no green, I think it'd be interesting to consider what's going on in the yellow places. Its likely those areas are close to parity even if male suicide is (marginally?) higher.
Particularly India and China.
Edit: just India, China is on the higher end after looking into the actual numbers. Also, Grenada should show up as green on this map, but the creator chose to not include it. Admittedly, it wasn't the only lesser Antilles island that was nixed so I'm not going to immediately call bias.