Unpacking the Complex Crisis of Male Suicide

All right, Susie, welcome to the ManTalks show. How are you doing today?

I'm good, Connor. Happy to be here.

Yeah, thank you so much for joining me. Uh, light conversation and topic today. Um, share a little bit with folks about the core premise of your work and what you hope to achieve with your work.

Wow. So, I mean, the core premise of my work— I'm a male suicide researcher. So I'm a research fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Suicide Behavior Research Lab there, and my work focuses exclusively on suicide in men. So I guess the key question that I'm trying to understand is, um, why is this— why is there this elevated risk for men in terms of dying by suicide? What is it about our worlds, our societies, our modern cultures that, uh, that may be elevating that risk for men. And what can we all do collectively as a community to create the conditions of increased bearability for those men in distress? Because, you know, I've— I hold it as a social issue, um, suicidal distress, even though it sits within the body of an, of an individual. That pain is tied to so many different factors external to the person. And, um, yeah, so I mean, what I hope to achieve— I mean, it's a great question— is that, I mean, I came into this work kind of for personal reasons of witnessing loved ones in suicidal distress and that sense of powerlessness that comes from watching a loved one really struggle. And for me, the going into research was this sort of personal quest, I suppose. I had to put my own pain somewhere that it, you know, that I didn't drown with within it. I needed something constructive to do with it. And so I really just was sort of obsessed with this question of trying to understand what brings somebody to the point where they feel they're in so much pain, they don't want to continue, and what can make life more meaningful. And because of that personal quest, for me, the, the purpose of the work has always been to give the information and the knowledge that I learned through research back to the people, back to the people that are living this reality, so that they can have a better understanding of what might be going on for them. And hopefully then be able to make, um, different decisions about what they might want to do with that pain, and hopefully on the long, long term lessen the conditions that are giving rise to, um, that pain. But it's— God, I'm sure we'll get into this, but for me, as a, you know, as a woman doing this work, it's completely transformed my understanding of the of the male experience in the modern world, you know, I really didn't have a clue what life was like for men. How so?

How, like, what shifted for you as you've done this work? And what would you say that you've come to sort of see or understand that maybe was missing before?

Connor Beaton, it was the simplest thing missing, which is just like sincere, open-hearted conversation and deep listening that's built on really trying to understand what is happening for the human being in front of you. And in doing so, all of these things then get revealed. And for me, a huge part of the work, in order to do the work well, has been about excavating my own gender biases that I came into this work not knowing I held. You know, I, I came into this work and, and did this work because I was very distressed about what was going on for men. So I came into it kind of with an open heart of wanting to, um, come alongside men, but I didn't realize how much I'd kind of been, uh, conditioned into certain ideas of men and masculinity. And part of my work is understanding how those cultural processes affect men, and particularly men who are suicidal. But I didn't realize coming into the work how much it was also going to be about how those ideas impact all of us, and therefore impact how we as societies and communities and workplaces and faith groups and so on, um, come alongside male pain and the way in which compassion may be, um, you know, constricted when it comes to our understanding of the male experience, which is um, you know, it's, it's an unacceptable social reality that we, um, you know, that we have. But to come back to your point of what shifted for me was just the, the— just the more conversations that I had and the more that men shared with me the, the experiences and the pain that they were carrying, you know, all of these, um— I, I describe it as a You know, there's that bit on your knee that when you hit it, it like flicks out automatically, like reflex. I call it this 'yeah, but men' reflex that we have as societies and cultures. When there's something about the male experience that may be about the way in which men are struggling or being harmed, we have this 'yeah, but men' reflex that hits out.

Yeah, but men cause it. Yeah, but men are the problem.

Yeah, that's it. Away, that's it, away. So we're never really listening because we're We're batting it away. And once I started dialing into that within myself and becoming aware of that happening for me, um, you know, the, the more I could then, um, you know, it's just, it's disappeared now, you know. I absolutely do not hear that anymore when I'm speaking, uh, to a man. But acknowledging it was so important for me in the journey of this work, acknowledging that that was there that, that was, you know, um, you know, had become a part of my kind of framework of, um, you know, viewing the world. There's one of the most important ideas I came across in my research was from these two psychologists, um, Martin Sieger and John Barry, who were right. They call it this gamma bias theory, and, um, it's a sort of idea about how our empathy can be socialized in, you know, in certain directions because of the ideas that we absorb and the stories that we hear and the narratives that we hear. Our empathy can be shaped in a way that we're more likely to see men as powerful and privileged than we are to see men as disadvantaged, and we're more likely to see men as harmful than to see the ways in which many men are being harmed by society. And that for me creates this, you know, they call it this sort of empathy gap, which for me is— it's so alive and so central to the question of male suicide and something that is, you know, I think is a social reckoning that we have to have in terms of if we really, really, really want to do something about suicide in men, there has to be this social reckoning about that empathy gap. Sorry, Connor. I think— Yeah.

No, no, no. That's great. I mean, it's great. I think this is one of the things— I mean, I just did a post about Inside the Manosphere. And for me, the biggest, most problematic thing with that doc, I think he did a great job sort of exposing some of these guys. I mean, like H.S. Tiki Tok here. I'm like, I didn't— I never even heard of that guy. And then I was like, man, this guy is a clown, you know? I mean, he's like, you know, getting young men into a funnel that pushes them towards OnlyFans models while shaming them for, you know, watching porn and OnlyFans. I mean, it was just insane. But I think the empathy gap was so present in that because there was a scene where they're talking to this young guy and he's talking about how, you know, he had just finished living out of the back of his car. He could barely afford groceries. And this came on the back of his brother committing suicide. And there was a moment there where I was like, oh, they're actually going to get into who the men are that are following these guys and why they're following them, the vacancy of male role models and the lack of empathy. And it just cut away and they never saw this guy again. You could see the pain in his eyes. There's no follow-up or follow-through there. And I was like, that's it. That's the problem, you know? And so it just reinforces this, this sort of— for me, it just reinforces this narrative. Like, the documentary just reinforces this narrative of like, these are bad men, these are toxic masculine men, and you shouldn't be anything like them. And I don't disagree with some of that. And, and it just paints them as the problem and paints those archetypes of men as the issue. But it doesn't actually look at, well, what are the core— what's the— that's like the symptoms, you know, of the problem. And it doesn't actually look at the underlying issue, which is that there are so many fatherless homes, there are so many young men growing up without a role model, there are so many young men who feel like society and culture has sort of turned against anything that's remotely male or masculine. And I think that we've produced a kind of vacancy in being able to say, here's what good men look like. You know, I really do believe that, that if you ask a lot of people— and it's not to— I don't want to like blame left or right politics because I think that's not fair— but I do think on one aisle, one side of the aisle, if you say, who's a good male role model for young men, they can't identify one. And it, it's kind of like this turning against men and masculinity that I think for a lot of guys, they feel like— I think Chris Williamson has sort of summed it up, and many people have said the same thing— is that a lot of men feel like they don't— they're not allowed to have problems. They just are the problem. And I do think that that perpetuates some of this. And it's— I think what you're pointing to is very important because I do think that for a lot of people, when they hear about You know, like one of the things that was shocking when looking at some of the data around this and some of your research is like suicide for, suicide for men in the UK is the leading cause for guys under 50. And it's like, well, holy crap. Like, that's shocking. You know, when you, when you say something like that in the UK, how do people normally respond? Is it kind of like 'Okay,' you know, or 'We should do something,' or, you know, like, what's the normal response to that? Because I think it's very interesting to see how people interact with this sometimes.

I mean, it depends on the audience. Sometimes I'm in audiences where they're very familiar with this work and that statistic, but other times you know, there is a real shock, a real shock. And there— and Connor, you, you— I mean, you wouldn't believe, you would not believe, it is intolerable to me the lack of research that is happening on this. It is just, it is— I find it absolutely unbearable. It, it, it, um, I just, I can't understand it. I cannot understand why there isn't more urgency around For me, it's such— this is, this is a splinter in the soul of our societies. I mean, it— I don't know how we can tolerate that the biggest thing that is killing, um, men in our— in the United Kingdom under 50 is, is deaths of despair. I mean, what a damning reflection on the conditions of, you know, modern society. I think in the United States it's the— it's the sixth leading cause of death for men.

I may have got that wrong, It depends on the— I was digging into that. It's like, for some, it depends on the state. It can range from second or third in the age of— from the age of 15 to 44, suicide is in the top 3. So 15 to 44. So if you're a man from 15 to 44, you're more likely to die by suicide than, you know, or a death of despair than most other issues. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it really is tragic. When you say that there's not a lot of research that's being done on that, what's, what's your, what's your take? Like, is it just something that's not funded? Is it something that, that because culturally we have this empathy gap towards, it's just not seen as relevant or important? Or is it I almost feel like sometimes when this conversation comes up, there's, there's almost like these two categories. There's the people who really care about this and get it, and they've, they've been around somebody that's lost a brother, a husband, a father, an uncle to suicide. And they're like, oh, actually, we do need to research this. And then there's people who haven't been around it or experienced it directly, and they're like, well, men are causing that. You know, it's like, well, if men just didn't fill in the blank, then they wouldn't take their own lives. Yeah. And it seems like that it becomes this sort of like circular logic.

I mean, I really, I just, I really struggle to make sense of the lack of research. I just, I don't understand. There's a lack of funding. Absolutely. I mean, I don't currently have funding myself. My funding ran out last month. So I'm back to not having an income and it's um, you know, you're then at a crossroads of, you know, I'm lucky that I could— I'm skilled to be able to go and get a job if I wanted, but I then have to research something that isn't this topic that is the topic that I want to research. So you've then got this period that I don't know how long it's going to last of having to hold my nerve and eat through my savings waiting for the sort of next thing to hopefully, come through. So it's very, very difficult to sustain, um, you know, funding on this, uh, on this issue. Um, but it's, it's, um, I think there's so many different kind of factors that can contribute to it, but it really, it just, it doesn't make sense to me that— so, um, in the United Kingdom, we started recording deaths by suicide, uh, the statistics of that in 1861. And every year, Connor, since 1861, um, for every single year, every single year, there had been more male deaths recorded than female. So we've known since 1861 that there's this gender dimension to, to deaths by suicide, and that's in almost every country in the world. You'll see the same pattern of higher, higher deaths in men. So it's historically we've known this, and geographically we know it. And I just— I said, you're— for me, the number one question in suicide research— there's lots of important questions, but the, the most obvious question for me to be asking is, what is it about the male experience that is elevating, um, risk for men? And I really, I'm at a loss to kind of understand why that hasn't you know, been given more priority. And the other, the other issue that with research that historically has happened is there's been a real bias towards quantitative research. So running big surveys, looking at like epidemiological data, and, and a lack of research that's actually about going and talking to men that are living this reality and saying, tell me what is going on for you, and trying to understand this, um, uh, you know, behavior through the lens and the lives and the language of the men that are living it. And again, that is something I do not understand. I don't understand how you think you can, um, address a problem as complicated as suicide without being in dialogue with the people that are carrying and holding that pain. So I did a big— my first study was a big— we did a big systematic review looking at 20 years' worth of research on male suicide. And, um, and sorry, I was looking at the qualitative work. So that's for people listening, like interviews, focus groups, where you're in dialogue with people living a reality. And for example, I, I couldn't find one study from the United States there was a qualitative study with men who are suicidal. That is fucking crazy, Connor. Now, I can't say, you know, we go through a process and we try to be as rigorous as possible. It may be, of course, you've missed something, and there may have been— we did this study back in, I think we ran the searches in 2021, so there may have been papers since. But it's still— I mean, the fact that applying the rigorous methods that we did, this wide fishing net, we couldn't surface one paper that was about being in dialogue directly with men. And even, even in that study, Connor, looking at 20 years' worth of research— bear in mind that, that thousands of papers get published on suicide every year— over 20 years, we could find 78 studies on the, the hat that looked at suicide in men. I mean, I, I don't know.

So hold on, so hold on, hold on. So you're, you're I just want to make sure I'm getting this correct. So out of all of the studies that you found in the States, none of them actually talked to men with suicidal ideation?

I couldn't find one study that was either— our criteria was either men who are suicidal, so men with thoughts of suicide, or men that had attempted, or people bereaved by male suicide. And I couldn't find one qualitative study That's crazy.

Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, that's, that's nuts.

It's completely bananas. And Connor, that's not to say there may have been work that happened that we missed, but it's not— so it's still indicative, I think, that there isn't sufficient amount that when you casting it out to pull papers back, you're not immediately getting, um, you know. So it's, um, that's bonkers. Yeah, it's, it's unacceptable, Connor. It's, uh, you know It's hard for me to stay calm sometimes. You're in these academic environments and, you know, everybody's sort of being academic-like, and you're thinking, I, I don't know what I'm missing. What am I— you know, um, and I think what's difficult, Connor, when you do do— because I'm a qualitative-based researcher primarily, I do do quantitative work, but you know, for me it's really about those, those conversations. So through your work, you were, you were looking in the eyes all the time of, of men in that kind of pain, or their, or loved ones who have lost somebody, and you're looking into the eyes of their pain, and you're, you're seeing kind of lives on fire. So, you know, and then you, you absorb that And it's then, you know, kind of difficult to go into these rooms where there's— I always describe it as like the elephant in the room of suicide research, this question about, about men. And, um, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, we're— there's some great researchers out there who, like me, are kind of on this mission to try and, um change things.

So, well, let's, let's dive into what you have found because I— so what are some of the alarm bells? Because I know that there was a study and I don't know if you were involved with this at all, but I remember hearing about a study that looked at men that had taken their own lives. And I think it looked at the notes that they had left behind or no, didn't leave the notes. It was, it was that we looked at whether or not the men had sought out some type of counseling or therapeutic help., and 90— I think it was 91% of men had sought out help, but 80-some-odd percent had been deemed as low risk or no risk for self-harm and suicide. And so I think, you know, one of the things that I've talked about quite a bit is that I think the therapeutic industry does a kind of piss-poor job. That's my clinical term. It kind of does a piss-poor job of being able to work with men in a way that's effective for men, and I think has become quite a bit more feminized in the sense that it really heavily, heavily, heavily focuses in on being able to talk about your problems and how you feel about those problems, but not necessarily give a kind of, you know, standardized guidance of like, here's what you specifically need to do about those issues, or I'm going to give you direction, or I'm going to help you get out of the story and into your direct experience in a way that's actually meaningful and helpful so that you're not just wallowing in it. And so, but I'm curious in terms of what have you found to be contributing factors for men? Because I think, I think you found that 92% of the studies showed that emotional suppression increased risk. And so I'm curious what you found is sort of what, what are the things that we need to look for? What are the things that we need to watch out for? Because I think this is a big thing that a lot of people are like, I don't know if he's really struggling that bad, you know. So what are the things that we do need to look out for?

It would be great to revisit that point as well about barriers to sort of accessing help and men's help-seeking experiences. But in, in terms of where we've got to in terms of understanding men's risk, so for me, I The first thing to say is that suicide is unbelievably complicated behavior. If we think of all the behaviors that humans do and like line them up, suicide is at the, the spectrum end of like deep, deep complexity. And by that I mean so many different factors can contribute to it. And, and, um, I, I sort of conceptualize it as, uh as a symphony of sorrow, as a person in suicidal distress experiencing this symphony of sorrow. And in the same way, Connor, when we go to an orchestra and we listen to the orchestra, we understand that the sound is being produced by all those instruments in interaction with one another. And for me, it's the same with the symphony of sorrow. It's all different kinds of risk factors that are unique to that individual. I'm somebody who's had thoughts and feelings of Suicide, my symphony of sorrow is completely unique to the lived experiences and the unique biology and, um, conditions that I have versus, you know, for example, somebody else. So in suicide research, you're kind of always walking this tightrope tension of trying to honor the fact that every— all suicidal pain is this unique symphony of sorrow, but at the same time trying to establish some kind of common understandings to help us navigate a path through it. And I would say that for me, within that, within these unique symphonies of, of sorrow, there's this common chord of pain. And this, this idea of pain, Connor, I think is absolutely critical, particularly when thinking and speaking and talking to men, because a lot of men don't really— when I speak to them, they don't really— they don't understand what, what is happening for them through the lens of mental illness or mental health. It doesn't necessarily— some men really do, but a lot of people, a lot of men, it doesn't resonate. But what every single man I've ever spoken to has spoken to me about is his pain, this, this feeling of being in pain and finding at times that pain unbearable. So You know, I kind of picture it as every single one of us carries around this tank of pain. You've got a tank of pain, Connor. I've got a tank of pain. And the contents of your tank are completely unique to Connor and the things that have happened to you in the same way that my contents are unique to me. And so for me, when we're thinking about suicide risk, there's kind of, there's 3 dimensions to it. The first is your exposure. So if you imagine a pipe at the top of your tank, which is your exposure pipe pouring pain into your tank. So we've got to worry about what is the, what is the exposure, both historically. So it might be about stuff that's happened in childhood that is still impacting you, and it may be stuff that's happening presently. It can also be stuff about things that you're worried about in the future, all those different things pouring pain through your exposure pipe. And then if we imagine a pipe at the bottom of our tank, which is our regulation pipe, And if we use good regulation strategies, it can help that pain move out the tank. And what we often see with certain men who are suicidal is the use of regulation tools that in the long term are compounding their pain. So things like, you know, men speak, saying things like using drink or drugs, gambling, self-harm, food, sex as ways, as literally described as pain relief. These things are pain relief for them. So in the short term, they're alleviating the pain, but in the long term, often you're just increasing your exposure to, to pain. And then if you imagine that every single one of us has a threshold where the, the— there's too much exposure to pain and our regulation pipe isn't working effectively, and those contents build and build and build, and we hit a threshold where in that moment pain feels unbearable. It's all-consuming, and we might start to feel like suicide is the only way to kind of escape it. So when I'm thinking about suicide, I'm thinking through that sort of lens of exposure, of regulation, and threshold. And I've gone slightly off track of my point of this— what I was saying of like these symphonies of sorrow, within them there's this sort of chord of pain. Which for me, Connor, is made up of 3 key notes that irrespective of your gender, I think are really fundamental to that chord of pain a person might be feeling. And the first note is about your relationships with other people. So the— your meaning— having meaningful intimate connection with other people. The second one is about how you think and feel about yourself. Can you tolerate who you are? And the third one is about your relationship with your emotions. You know, humans are feeling creatures, and we are having a feeling response to life all of the time. And how do we cope when that feeling response is really, really heightened? How do we regulate what is happening for us? And I think for people who are suicidal, in those moments of suicidal crisis, there is often dysregulation within those three cords. And that can sort of, you know, um, increase the sound of that chord of pain. And then when I think— when you take a cultural lens, when we look at the way in which men are socialized to be men and the way that all of us are socialized to interact and come alongside men, I think you can start to see the potential for the ways in which cultural ideas can enact, Connor, a deep psychological violence on some men. So if we think about, um, the note to do with feelings of self, so many men who are suicidal, Connor, have spoken to me about these deep, deep, deep feelings of failure, of having this strong sense of what are the markers that may make a successful man and a feeling that I have not hit those markers, and therefore I have— I am, I am a failure as a man. And so I think that the, the, the way that, um, male selfhoods are kind of culturally described and presented can really leave men vulnerable to internalizing, um, really, um, violent kind of feelings of failure.

Well, I think if I could just interject there for a moment, I think about the darkest periods of my own life, and I think the time specifically where I had some ideation. And the big thing for me was I could not stand who I was. Like, I really was in this place of like, I have to think back to it. It was like, I fucking hate who I am. I hate how I'm behaving. I hate the choices I'm making. I feel out of control. I feel unable to do anything about these behaviors that I can see are hurting other people, creating dysfunction in my life. And I don't like who I am. And I think that pushed me down this path of like, well, if I can't do anything about it, then what's left for me to do? And I think that this is, you know, over the last 11, 12 years, I mean, we've worked with so many men. I get messages all the time from men that are in dark places, and that's certainly a part of it. And I think the other piece that you're talking about that I think is important is it sometimes seems to me that the way in which men deal with their pain and the way in which we approach our own dysfunction is like socially, like people are upset about that. It's like, well, if men just didn't do that, it's like, well, but that's how we do approach our pain. You know, this is how, you know, this is what is happening. And so instead of shaming how men are interacting with their pain, we probably need to have a different conversation about it. Like, We wouldn't say, oh, you know, the way that women are dealing with their pain or their anger or their shame or their sadness or the grief or the trauma, that's wrong. They shouldn't be doing that. We would never do that. We would say, okay, let's research this. Let's understand.

Yes.

Let's actually equip women to better and more effectively deal with these very challenging times in their life. But it almost seems like we look at the way in which men deal with their pain, deal with their trauma, deal with whatever that might look like. And we say, well, they shouldn't do that. We should, you know, men shouldn't deal with it in that way. And I do think that the violence that you're talking about is the other piece that I have seen to be, you know, I mean, I've been fortunate to work with tens of thousands of guys now over the course of the last 11, 12 years. And we really do like men who are in a hard place. I— it's fascinating to see how we can be self-abusive. We can be almost like hostile and violent towards the parts of ourselves that we do not like. And, you know, so when we— a lot— for a lot of men, when they see a part of themselves, whether it's a behavior or an action, or an inner dialogue, or a pain or an emotion that they don't like, or that they think, you know, makes them weak or something like that, we can be really hostile towards that part to the point where a lot of the men that I've worked with over the years, they're actively trying to like kill that part off, you know, their inner critic that's harsh. They're like at war with that part of themselves. And I think that instead of saying, well, men just shouldn't operate like that, we need to better understand, as you're talking about, like, how is a man relating to his pain? And instead of making him wrong for doing it in that way, how do we support him in, one, us as institutions and coaches and therapists, better understanding how to work with that? And two, how do we then provide him with tools and resources and methodologies that can help to shift that behavior? Yeah, does that make sense?

Absolutely. And it makes me think back to that point you made about the Manosphere program and that the incredibly moving story for that guy who'd been living in a car and lost his brother to suicide. I mean, two events that must be so psychologically horrendous to have to deal with. Like, anybody dealing with those things is going to be in a tremendous amount of pain. And he's looking for a place in which to, you know, you know, to find places to cope with it. And going back to your point of not that, you know, of trying to contextualize where behavior comes from, what might be, um, you know, uh, driving it. So yeah, for me it was very, very— I, I always say, as a woman researching the work, one of the quickest things that I had to get on board with and learn to understand very quickly was how enormous these feelings of failure can be. And I think that— and these notes of pain kind of interact with one another in the sense that what I mean is that— so one of the things as well is about how I think that cultural norms, you know, if you're being told as a man, be independent, be self-reliant, suppress your pain, cope, you know, hide your vulnerability. If you start to internalize all of those ideas, it narrows the space for meaningful, intimate, proper connection with other people. It's so difficult to be properly connected with other human beings that you are hiding your pain from, hiding the diff— the things that you're finding difficult or struggling from. And so I think then there's this compounding of issues sometimes with something like feelings of failure is that, you know, most of the women in my life feel like failures, and we know that about each other because we communicate it and we share it. And I think there's a danger sometimes for men is that they— because that sharing isn't always been allowed or available, there's a real then internalization of those feelings of failure, that these are uniquely condemning of me as a, as a man. And I remember really vividly a quote that I read, Connor, in a story— not a story, sorry, a study from Brazil about men that attempted suicide. And this man said, "I tried to set up a business for my family and I failed. And so there was no other alternative except killing myself." And for me, it's such a distressingly stark thought pattern of— and it reveals something so tragic in terms of how he as a man has learned to understand where his value resides, you know, that he— his value to his family is, is as an economic provider. And if he hasn't been able to achieve that, he, he's failed in that area, then for him he's literally saying, I have no other value to them. I don't have emotional value to my family. I don't have relational value as a, as, as a father. Like, that for me is absolutely devastating. And another aspect, I think, of this cultural violence that we allow human beings in our societies to only see their value as coming through that, um, you know, economic domain, which is not what, as human beings, you know, is our kind of evolutionary kinds of, you know, inheritance in some way.

But, well, I think it's tough because I think for a lot of men, I do think that men and women's identity structures are often built in different ways and that, you know, we still do have a cultural norm or expectation that men do, you know, that your ability, that your, your sort of worth and value as a man is predicated on your ability to do, perform, accomplish, achieve. And as much as we socially might try and reduce that expectation and that pressure on men, I think that men still know, if they're— especially if they're straight men, heterosexual men— they still know that women want men to earn as much as them, if not more. Like, that's still pretty common. A guy can go online and see that pretty quickly if he's watching any kind of dating advice and stuff like that. So I think there's still this expectation of my worth and my value, my identity is based off my ability to perform, my ability to achieve, my ability to get results. And one of my first— a man that I did construction with, and he went on to start his own company in business. And, you know, he had 3 daughters, I think, and he built this business and he had 50 or 60 employees. And, and he, he unfortunately ran it in a way where he took on a whole bunch of debt and then basically the company bankrupted. And, you know, same thing. He took his own life. And, you know, he the, I think, the shame of the failure of letting down his family. And there was, you know, in his note that he left behind, he essentially said, like, I am, I'm making this decision because it's the only possible way that I can see financial solvency for my family because they'll get my life insurance and it'll erase the debt. And so, you know, that's the type of pressure and responsibility that he felt. And I'm sure he was dealing with a lot of other stuff. Yeah. You know, and it compounds that situation. But I want to— you know, I think what we've been talking about is this notion that— and I think your research shows this— that when we as men suppress our emotions, when we suppress what we need in a relationship, that that is a huge, huge, huge contributing factor to leading down that path. But I also want to kind of talk about childhood dads, the sort of early wounds that can, that can play into this. And I think you had a study last year at 20/25 that, that looked at childhood challenges and, you know, male suicide risk across 2,600 men. What were some of the really prominent findings? Like, what were the striking things that stood out to you about the relationship between early adult life for young boys and then suicidality later on in life?

Yeah, I think that there's, um, so we actually just had a paper out last week, another one looking at childhood experiences as well. I think for me, like, early life adversity is a well-established risk factor for, for suicide, for a person of any gender. I think when we think about men and boys, it's really important to consider this potential double jeopardy for them around the combination of those early life experiences and then the— these cultural norms. So if you're a young boy exposed to an environment of— if you go back to the pain— sorry, the, um, pain tanks, you're growing up in an environment where there's high exposure to pain into your tank for different reasons. It could be about stuff that's going on at home, stuff that's going on at school, stuff that's going on in the community, but there's a there's factors that are increasing your exposure to pain as a young boy, and then you're being socialized in these cultural norms of emotional suppression. You're being told by society and, and cultures to suppress that pain. Where's that pain going to go to find meaningful release? The pain has to be processed, it has to be made sense of and understood. And if it doesn't, it becomes this energetic force, you know, acting on your life in ways that you don't necessarily want to. Going to your point, Connor, of in your, you know, most dark moment kind of feeling like you were doing behaviors that you didn't want to be, um, you know, to be doing. And I think that for me, again, going back to this sort of idea of, you know, cultural violence, it's there again, I think, in terms of then this compounding impact of early life adversity. I mean, for me, Connor, it was just— these were really difficult studies to do because you're, you're hearing a lot of stories of really, really bleak, difficult things that have happened to a lot of men. And I think— so we did a quantitative study and we were comparing, um, you know, how are certain early life adversity, um, increased your likelihood of having some kind of suicidal history, whether that was ideation or attempt. And, um, the two things that kind of consistently, uh, every kind of early life experience increased your chance of having a suicidal history, but the things that most significantly increased were emotional abuse and bullying. And then in terms of increasing the odds of you having made an attempt rather than just having thoughts of suicide, as well as the emotional abuse and, um, bullying, it was sexual abuse as well. And again, when we start to think about an experience of sexual abuse through the, the lens of these cultural norms of masculinity and the additional challenges that there might be for men to be able to, um, speak about those experiences and have them understood, um, We also did a qualitative study alongside that, asking men just to, in their own words, to describe the events in childhood that they felt had impacted their adult lives. And, you know, I remember one guy who'd experienced sexual abuse from female perpetrators saying, you know, how difficult it is to be believed and to be, uh, you know, to be— have his experiences recognized as, um, you know, sexual abuse. So for me, the early life experiences is so, so, um, critical. And when we did the qualitative study, so that was about, I think it was about 700 men that took part in that, and they'd all been suicidal in the last week or year, average age about 30 years old. And 79% of them, Connor, said that they'd had their first thought of suicide or made their first attempt before they left their teenage years. So before they became a sort of young adult, life has already brought you to the point where you're questioning your ability to stay. I mean, that for me again is when I, when I talk about collective responsibility, you know, what kind of societies are we, um, building where that is allowed to be a young person's, uh, you know, reality. And I get— I don't know what it's like in America, but I get there's a lot of talk at the moment because of things like the manosphere and things like that about boyhood, what's happening for boys. And it's all— the conversation is always through the lens of the propensity for boys to do harm. That seems to be the primary conversation that we have when we're talking about boys. And I'm looking at all of this data that's telling me all of these ways in which men men, when they were boys, were really fucking harmed by life, by people, by experiences, by events. And I think, where is the balance in this, you know, in this, um, conversation? So, and for me, a really key part of all of this is how these experiences affect the, uh, attachment, affect then your ability to be securely attached, not just to other people, to be able to trust that other people are going to be safe and, um, and, and caring, but also your attachment to self from a young age, like an interruption in your understanding of who you are in the world. If you're a kid going— I remember a man telling me, um, he got really, really horrendously bullied at school, and he'd go into the school canteen and the kids in the canteen would just immediately start chanting his name and saying that they hate him. And you think then, for this young boy, why— how does he become securely attached to his, his sense of having value in the world when his feedback from his peer group is that they hate him? And he has no— you know, you're not able at that age to kind of contextualize it and, you know, and understand why. So for me, these early life experiences could really interrupt then the attachment process, both in terms of feeling safe with other people but also feeling that it's safe to be you in the world. And there could be really different reasons for why that happens, but it, it's sort of all those different experiences can, in their own pathway, lead back to kind of interrupting that, um, those processes. And again, when we wrap all of that in a cultural sphere and start to think that the— as well as those environmental experiences, what is happening on a cultural level? What message are we giving, uh, men and boys? I think you can start to see the possibility of an elevated risk. Um, you know, and it was— it was, to be honest, Connor, it was, you know, it's harrowing looking at that, um, looking at that, that data and all of those, um, experiences.

Yeah, it's— I mean, I think the amount of stories that I've heard from men where— and I think this is, again, it's, it's— again, I think oftentimes men's issues are looked at, and so often I hear them kind of glazed over by the statement of like, well, that's just because other men hurt them. And, you know, this like, this sort of like circular logic, and it's like, well, Do you know how many of the men that I've worked with who were abused by women, you know, who are abused by their mothers or a female babysitter or was not protected? Like, you know, it's— yeah, I think, I think of all of the stories that I've heard from men and, you know, yes, there's a responsibility for those men to then talk about them, of course, you know, but we have to— I think we have to shift the cultural conversation of well, you know, men are just causing that and men are causing the social issues of not being able to talk about those things. And, we have to shift away from that because I think that the level and the intensity of male blame that shows up in these conversations oftentimes reinforces the exact issue. You know, we can't just say, "Hey, there's a social and cultural challenge and component of this that we also need to look at. And I think that also this idea, it rubs the idea that men are just unequivocally the oppressor class and that men are unequivocally the, the predatory class and that women are always the victims and that women are never the oppressor or never the villain or never the predator. And that just isn't the case. And you— I think, you know, you see this when, you know, there's like all of these cases of teachers and high school students. And you look at the data and, and male teachers that are, you know, have sexual relationships with female students get longer jail time and get, get harsher punishments than female teachers having sexual relationships with male students. And so there's this kind of like, well, you know, they can't be— they can't be the sort of the predator, right? It's just— it's not— doesn't work like that. What did that young man do and how did he initiate it? And now he liked it and, you know, all that type of stuff. And so I think that— I think that we just have this kind of imbalance that we end up needing to address. And on that note, I think you also in your work found something interesting about maternal overcontrol and, and the, the implication of the connection to the risk of male suicide, something that you described as possibly like a first of its kind finding. Can you explain what that was and what you found?

Just to, just to feed off your point as well, because everything you said was very interesting and then sparked lots of things for me. I also don't think it helps you know, as a woman, it doesn't help. Women have great propensity to cause harm. I have great propensity to cause harm. I have caused harm, you know, in— and I think that there is— it doesn't help us as women to always be the reverse of the, the other experience, the other side of the men always being looked at as the people to blame, is that the women then also become sort of— blame's kind of the wrong language, but they're accountable. I think that they're, you know, I— we also as women need to be alive for the ways in which that we need to be accountable for our, um, you know, behaviors. And there has to be some self-reflection, um, you know, within that as well. And I think that also the other thing that is interesting, so, is about how these ideas affect all of us. So for example, I was speaking to a man recently who wasn't, um, this was socially, so it wasn't involved in my research, but he was kind of saying to me about he'd become a dad and he was saying, you know, like the mental health impact for him of that and the struggles and how embarrassed he'd, you know, how difficult he'd been found like speaking about it. And then he was we were sort of talking about the ways in which fathers can struggle, and he sort of stopped and he said, it's really interesting because hearing you speak, in my head I'm thinking, just get over it, just deal with it, get on with it. And so he's having, he's having the experience from himself of struggling, but he is also ingrained in these ideas and beliefs that, um, you know, that are seeking in a way to kind of minimize, constrain that. Or, um, so it's so mucky, kind of, uh, all of this stuff. But going back to your question, that yes, we, um, one of the things that we found in the quantitative study of childhood was, um, um, the presence of sort of maternal over-control is increasing the, uh, odds of I can't remember which, I think it was of having suicidal ideation compared to having no suicidal history. The tricky thing, Connor, when you do the limitation with quantitative work is it doesn't tell you much more, you know. So we now know that there's this thing potentially around maternal overcontrol, but we then need, that then needs a whole load of additional now kind of qualitative work to really contextualize you know, why is that particularly challenging for, um, men? Where's that over-control, you know, sort of, um, coming from? Is it a response to being, uh, living in particular neighborhoods, of socioeconomic conditions, being a, um, a single-parent household? There's all this sort of additional questions then that is sort of challenging with quantitative work um, because you're— you sort of establish a kind of foothold into something, but you're left then with all these other— a whole new side of the rock face opens up. And, um, but absolutely, in my data, there were all kinds of perpetrators when it came to the experiences of, uh, or the painful events for, um, the men in our data in, in childhood. And we, um You know, we have, you know, I think that, that we have to start having those conversations. And it is so, you know, because we're then— it makes it so much— every minority group, uh, Connor will talk about the— I belong to several minority groups and I know this for a fact, the importance of representation. Of seeing your experience out in the world helps you then to consolidate your own sort of sense of identity and, and strength around that. And if, um, male victims of female abuse are rendered invisible, then we isolate the men that have had those experiences kind of even, even further from accessing help and Um, yeah, anecdotally, I went to the dentist about a year ago, and there's in there— it's like a gender-neutral bathroom— and they had a poster up for Women's Aid, which is a UK charity for, um, female victims of domestic abuse. And then they had a poster up beside it for Mankind, which is a UK men's charity for male victims of abuse. And that was the first time that I have ever seen those posters side by side, and I thought, that is incredible. Because not only for a man that might need to access those services, seeing that there, but I was like, for every single person that uses this bathroom, we're suddenly making visible to people that men can be victims of domestic abuse as well and need support and shelters, and start to, you know, sort of chip away at those internalized ideas that we have about who is you know, a victim of certain behaviors and who is the perpetrator?

Well, I've certainly seen in my experience working with men who have experienced abuse of all different kinds and varieties that men who have experienced some type of abuse sexually, physically, or emotionally from a woman oftentimes have a very— it's like a specific type of shame and, and sometimes a more difficult time speaking about it because there's a self-perception of, well, was anything even wrong? And could— can women actually abuse me? And that question kind of lingers and can sometimes be the the barrier that, that prevents them from even talking about it in the first place. And so it's, you know, I do think that it's becoming more commonplace to talk about, which is good. What about the, what about the role of, of dad having an absent father, having a father who is, is maybe abusive? How does that play into and what is the research shown in terms of that playing into these types of situations? Because I think when I look at the data here in the US around absent fathers in the household, it disproportionately affects young boys in so many different categories. It's insane. Like school dropouts, behavioral disorders, you know, much higher likelihood of serving time in jail. I mean, it's just across the board. But how does it specifically or directly impact deaths of despair?

I haven't done any— it wasn't a huge finding in the research that we've done. I would say the things that came up were some men absolutely spoke about a lack of a male role model, I think, and also not just at home but kind of culturally, the feeling that the conversation about men and masculinity also wasn't offering them a positive vision of who they can be in the world as men. So if you both don't have someone at home to learn that from, and then being told that, um, you know, that these sort of ideas— I remember a young boy, uh, um, from Scotland, um, saying that, you know, at school what he learned about men and masculinity was he was going to be violent and a rapist. And so he learned to hate himself because that was the message that he was hearing. So I think there's both a kind of a void for some men, both at home of that male role model, but also a void socially and culturally. At the same time, there are great, brilliant men, you know, sort of everywhere. But I think that the prevailing kind of conversation that we have is one of, um, you know, can be such a sort of negative one. But I would, you know, I think it's something that's really, really, um, you know, from what I observe, and this, this, this, this strong desire to form a a male identity, and the struggle of doing that when you don't have somebody to learn that from, and you, you're then on your own. And also then receiving those messages of, you know, being strong, denying your pain. So trying to cope with that void and that wound, you know, alone, it's you know, you can imagine the sort of psychological challenges that could potentially, you know, come along with that.

Let's, let's talk a little bit about recovery, maybe just to sort of close things out. If there are men that are listening to this that are struggling with it or know somebody that's struggling with it, I know that you developed the 3R recovery model alongside your risk model. So what does that look like? And I don't know if we need to talk about whether or not it's different for men than it is for women. If that's helpful, we can. But what are the things that men can start to do if they're struggling with suicidal ideation?

It's a— it's really interesting, Connor, in this work, I'm sure that you experience this as well, is the huge diversity of men that you encounter. Like, men are so beautifully different, varied, and so it's— what works for one man doesn't necessarily work for another. And for me, it's all about just build a toolkit that works for you and don't be shamed about what your toolkit might be. So there's loads of like incredibly beautiful things that are happening in the United Kingdom of like peer groups for men. Like, I've heard men going to like car rallies or like cold water swimming. Some men that meet in their local library to do like a knitting group. Um, other men I heard about that do ferret walking together. It's, you know, I think, Connor, we need a really, really rich ecosystem of diverse kinds of interventions and support. Um, to reflect the kind of diversity of men. So, but in terms of our 3R model— so the 3D model is about how cultural norms of masculinity can contribute to denial, disconnection, dysregulation, those 3 notes in that chord of pain. So in your relationship with other people, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your emotions. And the 3R model is just about recognizing, reconnecting, and regulating those three areas of your life. And how you do that, Connor, to some extent, I think, is up to the individual, you know, about how the different ways in which you might, um, you know, find what you might find a nourishing experience is going to look different for each individual. So Um, but I think that there is something really, really, really sacred about male spaces, um, about, you know, peer-led spaces, um, where men gather with other men and start to normalize the pain that they're holding, start to realize there's many different— there's, there's limitless ways to be a man. And, um, you know, in the hope that I think can come when you— I remember one guy saying to me how powerful it was when he was able to sit and talk to another man. He'd made a very serious attempt on his life, and he's— he was able to go and speak to another man who made 8 or 9 attempts on his life as well. And he said they both laughed about it. They both could sit together and just laugh about it. And you could feel what a releasing moment that was of, of, of connection, and that something happens in that moment of, of meeting somebody who's, who's, who can taste some of what you've been, uh, um, what you've been carrying. So I think those spaces are so, so, um, you know, important. I think that You know, it's really difficult, Connor, as well, because at different points in your life, different things may— um, you'll be ready to receive different things. So for me personally, you know, like in my 20s, I remember having conversations with friends that were therapists saying to me, you know, Susie, have you ever thought about going and talking to someone? And I was like, what would I have to say? And then actually when, you know, 10 years later, going and talking to somebody really changed my life profoundly. So, you know, your toolkit can, um, evolve and change in different moments. I do think it's really important that you— to make sense of the contents of your pain tank. It's really important, you know, to understand where is this pain that I'm holding come from. And, um, then be able to sort of make better decisions about how am I going to regulate this, and is the way in which I'm regulating it in the long term going to be kind of, um, effective for me. And then in terms of improving your relationship with yourself, I mean, I think, Connor, for me, that's kind of sometimes the hardest bit of the work, because I think that often the amount of violence that we permit towards ourselves I know for me, the amount of violence I— the amount of violence I— the way I trash-talk myself, I never tolerate anybody else saying those things to me. But it's like a different level of behavior that I, you know, allow for me. And changing that relationship, I think, you know, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, Connor, as well. Like, for me, improving regulation in those three areas, that's a lifetime's work. I don't— none of us are like, I'm now gold star smashing that every day, no issues. Like, I'm actively every day still engaged with, um, trying to, um, you know, do those things well. So, um, and I think, you know, I think there's something for me as well about Well, Connor, we could talk all day about the different aspects of it, but there's something for me, for certain men as well, such a struggle to recognize themselves as legitimate recipients of care, that they're so, they're so ingrained in that view of themselves as the one that protects, the one that does, the one that just sucks it up and keeps going, and that's your identity becomes the suppression. That's kind of your, um, you know, sort of way of surviving. And the other thing, Connor, to say is it is, um, because I think that childhood is such a key part of this puzzle for many men— not all men, but for many of them— and often in childhood you're learning your coping strategies sometimes in an unsafe environment And so those coping strategies are effective to some extent for the unsafe environment. If you're growing up in an emotionally abusive household, learning to suppress your emotions might be the most effective thing you can do to survive that household, because feeling them and trying to express and communicate them is potentially going to get a very negative reaction. So learning then to just shut off, numb, might be the most effective thing to do in an unsafe environment. But once you're in a safer environment, once you're an adult out living your own life, forging the life that you want to build in the values that you hold as a human being, it's not necessarily the coping strategy that's going to serve you anymore. But if that's become your point of safety, doing that helps to keep me safe, it's so difficult sometimes to surrender, you know, to something different. And for me, Connor Beaton, the real challenge in this work, because I have conversations all of the time with men who post an attempt have opened themselves up now to completely— to the possibility of completely different coping strategies because they understand now that their old ones were not serving them and were leading them to a point where their life was endangered. And so they're now— they've become much more open and receptive. And I often say to them, How would we have reached you if we got a time machine and went back, you know, to you, you know, with you, Connor Beaton, now, for example, if we went back to that point when you were in your, um, in that moment, you know, for me, that's the real challenge of reaching men before they, before they, um, hit that point that, you know, I think is Yeah, I think that's, that's been a big part of my work is like trying to reach men before the bottom, you know, is like, can I talk to men before they're at the ledge?

Can I talk to men before they hit rock bottom? Can I talk to men, you know, who are genuinely struggling? And, you know, I did this, I did this episode last year, actually, that was called A Message to Men Who Want to Give Up. And it was all about this topic. It was like, you know, speaking directly to the man who's like, I don't want to be here anymore, you know, and just sharing a personal story and talking about what that was like for me in that moment. And then, you know, one thing that we do at the weekends because we run, you know, we run live retreats with men and We have an online community and stuff like that. But it's something that I do every single weekend is when we gather men is we talk about this topic and open it up and say, you know, who here has found themselves in that place, you know, where you've thought about this, where you've attempted? And it varies every single weekend. It varies based on the group. It can, you know, sometimes it's 40% of the guys, sometimes it's half the guys, sometimes it's, you know, 95% of the guys. But usually that's the first time where men get to talk about the real, like, yeah, I'm in this place now, or I was in this place a year ago. And that's why I'm here, because something needed to change. And usually it's, it's some culmination of being able to express what that period of time was like, or is like, that they're in right now. And then also being able to start to address some of the things that have been suppressed, whether it's from their childhood, you know, the abuse that they experienced, the neglect, the abandonment, or what have you, or some of what's been happening in their current life. Because some guys, you know, it's like my childhood was okay, but the current circumstances that I'm in, in my divorce and not being able to see my kids, and being financially ruined, it, you know, fucks them up. And they're like, I don't— there's no way out of this, and the system has put me into a place where I am just screwed, and my life doesn't look a way that I want it to, and I can't do anything about it. So, you know, sometimes I think a big part of it is really about locating, like you're talking about, the pain tank, what's inside of it, what put that there, and then being able to have an avenue of some type of expression to deal with what has been suppressed because it plays such a huge role for us as men. I could talk to you for hours about this. I think it's such an important topic. I think your research is really important. Thank you for doing the work that you've done and sitting with men and having conversations and looking at this. And I think it's— I mean, it's hard. It makes me emotional because I I've said this before, and I've, like, doing this line of work, I mean, I get messages all the time. I get DMs, I get emails from men who are really struggling and are at the end of their rope. And it's hard to not feel responsible for, like, I'm going to save you. And instead, it's like, I'm going to give you resources and here are some tools and here's support. And one of the things that I've really tried to do with our— like, we have something called The Alliance, which is— we've got like 1,100 guys in there from all over the world. And one of the things I've really tried to institute in that is a culture of, if you are in this group, you are going to experience what it's like to have somebody else give a shit about you. And that's such an important piece because I know what it's like to be a man and walk through the world feeling like I don't actually know if anybody in the world of 8 billion people gives a shit about me. And so we've really tried to institute this culture of like, if you see a man struggling, do something, you know, call him, message him, talk to him and really show up for one another in a way where he can't run that script anymore. Like, you can't pretend that nobody here gives a shit about— like, you can't pretend anymore. And you can't pretend like your— what you're suppressing and hiding and not dealing with isn't actually welcome here because it is welcome here and you can bring it here and we can deal with it here. And so I think more spaces like that are going to be important in helping men have the resources and the outlets for those things. But for people that are wanting to learn more about you, your work, support you in some way, shape, or form, where should they go? Just direct them to where you'd like them to go?

Yeah, so I've got a website called malesuicideresearch.com, and there's lots of, um, I try to, with every study, um, that we do, to create a kind of public guide for it so that it's not just behind an academic paywall, but people can access the information. And then I've got an Instagram page which is male_suicide_research, again, where I try to share content that's engaging and can help people kind of better understand what's going on for them. I mean, Connor, it sounds— the work that you're doing sounds beautiful. I mean, it must be deeply emotional for you on those weekends witnessing, you know, all these just, it's, it's, I, I don't know, sometimes I have the feeling like it's people that have been— the thing that really upsets me about the manosphere and the, and those influencers is that they are talking to a group of people who are sort of dying of thirst in the desert, and they're saying to that group of people, there's water in that direction, and they fucking, they know that there isn't any water there, and they're just sending them off in, uh, and I can't bear that. But I, I, I'm thinking about your weekend, this experience of watching these men take a drink of water and like how beautiful that must be to, uh, for everybody to be witnessing, but also to be an active part of. So you're not just kind of a passive recipient, you know. I think again, that's why these peer support spaces can be important for certain men, is it's not just a passive receiving of, of, um, help, you also get to, you know, contribute. Like you say in the Alliance, you know, you're, you're here to give a fuck about people. You've got to be active in your, uh, care. And yeah, we get to experience— you know, you look at the news and you see one story of human beings and it's fucking bleak and depressing. But I say to people that in this work you get to— we see enough, even though we're dealing with the saddest of sad subjects, you also get to witness this incredibly, at times, beautiful, powerful story of what human beings can be in the way that we can show up for one another. Yeah, you get to—

I mean, I, you know, I, I do believe that there's, there's purpose inside of the pain, you know, and that it's, it's a weird psychological and human truth that meaning— like, we have to go through hardship to find meaning. It's such a, it's such a weird thing. Like, you can't escape it. And, you know, and that, that hardship produces— and it's— I think the thing is, the distinction is, is that we don't necessarily need to pursue actively pain. You know, because life has it baked in for most of us. You know, life has hardship baked in for most of it. It serves us the nutrients that we need to metabolize and to turn into something else. And, you know, I think providing places and spaces where people can do that is, is extremely valuable. But, well, we'll have the links to all of your work in the show notes. I'd love to have you back on at some point and support you in any way that I can in getting funding. And just supporting your work. I do think it's very, very valuable. And yeah, thank you so much for what you're doing. We'll have the links for all that. For the people that are tuning in, this is a Man It Forward episode if ever I have heard one. Man It Forward. Share it with somebody. Share it with somebody that, you know, needs to hear it, could use the resources, could just use the conversation. Men it forward to somebody that you, that you know could use this. So thank you so much for tuning in. Susie, thank you so much for joining me, and we'll see you next time.

Thank you.