It’s shocking how it took the death of well-known comedian Robin Williams for us as a society to talk about male mental health and suicide. Guys tend to get the shaft when it comes to… well, pretty much everything to do with mental health. We as a society have made it difficult for any male person to feel comfortable talking about mental illness, much less seek the help they need.

An article from the UK’s International Business Times says this about male mental health and suicide numbers:

“Suicide is a predominantly male problem. It is the biggest killer of men aged between 20 and 49 and of the 5,981 suicides that occurred in Britain in 2012, 4,590 were men. In February, the proportion of men taking their own lives in the UK reached its highest level for more than a decade – with 19 deaths by suicide for every 100,000 men in 2013.”

When we think of the suicidal person, a lot of us tend to picture a young middle school or high school girl. It’s what we most commonly hear about in the news. Though there are still reports of male suicide, those tend to be overshadowed by the female suicides of school age young women. That’s not to say both aren’t equally important; it’s simply that news coverage is unbalanced when it comes to male mental health and suicide versus female.

The United States’ male mental health and suicide statistics, though much the same in other areas, have a startling difference when it comes to the age of men committing suicide:

“The highest suicide rates in the U.S. are found in white men over age 85… four times as many men as women die by suicide; however, women attempt suicide two to three times as often as men.” (source: NIMH statistics from The Kim Foundation)

Suicide in young men and women, surprisingly enough, isn’t the age group that holds the #1 spot for suicides. Though the UK puts the age for the most suicides in men between 20 and 49 years of age, the United States’ age group is shockingly higher at 85+. It seriously blew my mind when I read that. The website doesn’t state any causes of suicide in men 85 and over, but my guess (and it is a guess) is that it’s due to health issues, most likely physical ones.

No matter what the age group, male mental health and suicide is something we as a nation need to face. I’ve done my best in my own life to be open to conversation with my male acquaintances who suffer mental health issues, including my dad. I try to be as supportive as I can be and encourage them to seek help if they need it.

A few years ago, the theatre director in a nearby town killed himself, though not too many people felt sorry for him; he’d been caught with somewhere near 10,000 images of child pornography on his computer. But no matter what a person has done in his personal and professional life, no matter how bad the sin, we need to look at suicide as something we want to avoid at all costs.

When it comes down to it, we need to break the societal “norm” that men are supposed to be a pillar of strength, one that doesn’t need to seek help for “weaknesses” like emotional or mental health issues. Male mental health and suicide is a reality we need to face. We need to accept it. We need to make it okay for men to seek treatment and admit how they feel. If a guy we knew had cancer, we wouldn’t tell him that taking chemotherapy was for women and that he should just tough it out. So why do we feel the need to tell them that about mental illness?

The mental illness gender stigma is only one facet of the stigma mental illness sufferers face, but it’s an incredibly important one. Given the statistics above, we should be paying special attention to it. For more information on male mental health and suicide, I highly encourage you to check out Men’s Movement at their website, or follow them on Twitter at @MensMovement. This group is working hard to erase the barrier that keeps men from seeking treatment, and their posts are incredibly informative. Good work, guys.