# data[].attributes.body
This shows how the men in the uk has a high suicide rate

# data[].attributes.body
This shows just one of many schools in Iraq that has been destroyed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1981, 2,466 women in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later the number in 2012 had almost halved to 1,391 (Ref.[1], see above graphic). In 1981, 4,129 men in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later the number in 2012 had risen to 4,590. Males are now 77% of suicides, women 23%.

Why?

Perhaps the reduction in female suicides could be thanks to improvements in health care, including psychiatric care, plus a range of suicide prevention barriers as well as social, political and personal empowerment.

Are we to conclude that none of these improvements apply to males?

To put these figures in perspective, considering just England and Wales, there were 3,740 male suicides and 1,101 female suicides in 2012 compared with 15 men and 76 women killed by partner violence last year, and a total number of homicides of 380 men and 171 women. Clearly suicide is a far bigger killer than either partner violence or homicide in general. And it is mainly men that are dying.

The graph below, from Ref.[2], shows that there is a marked peak in men's suicide rate in the age range 40 to 50. It is not just younger men killing themselves. It is men whose misery has, it appears, reached a certain maturity. In Wales and Scotland the suicide rate peaks for somewhat younger men at an alarming 40 per 100,000, and in Northern Ireland the peak is 50 per 100,000 (Ref.[2]).

But it is in men's prisons that suicide truly peaks. From Ref.[3] we learn that, "between January 2013 and 2 October 2014, 134 adults, including four women, killed themselves in prison". ( Aside: Regular readers of this or similar blogs will note the wording - I paraphrase "130 monkeys and 4 real human beings"). In financial year 2013/14 there were 88 self-inflicted deaths in UK prisons. For men this amounts to a rate of about 93 per 100,000, more than six times the UK average.

The latest data indicate that the suicide rate in men's UK prisons is the highest for many years (Ref.[3]). Ministry of Justice figures show that whilst deaths are up in men's jails they are down in women's facilities (Ref.[3]). The latter has been attributed to improved safety measures as a response to the recommendations of the Corston Report.

I have had occasion to excoriate this report previously (Ref.[4]). It is one of the most egregious examples of partisan compassion to come out of governmental sources (and that is saying something). This is the report that contains one of my all-time favourite feminist quotes: " equality does not mean treating everyone the same." The thrust of Baroness Corston's report is that we really should not treat women prisoners the way we treat men prisoners - because, well, that's too horrible. In contrast to female prisoners, Baroness Corston does not consider compassion towards male prisoners to be necessary. That's a shame because it would appear that the result is an increasing suicide rate. Who would have guessed?

But I digress. The purpose of this post is to examine what is being done to identify the reasons for men's high suicide rate in the population at large, and what is being done to prevent it.

You will guess the answer. But let's examine the smoke screen first.

Ref.[5] sets out the government strategy for suicide prevention. Its overall objective is a reduction of the suicide rate in the general population, and specifically reducing the risk of suicide in key high-risk groups. It states that,
We have identified the following high-risk groups who are priorities for prevention:

young and middle-aged men

people in the care of mental health services, including inpatients

people with a history of self-harm

people in contact with the criminal justice system

specific occupational groups, such as doctors, nurses, veterinary workers, farmers and agricultural workers.

So far, so good. Men, as the obvious demographic, accounting for 77% of suicides, have been identified. But later it states,
This strategy identifies the following groups for whom a tailored approach to their mental health is necessary if their suicide risk is to be reduced.....
and goes on to list demographics non of which are "men" or even specifically male, with the exception of "veterans". I was pleased to see "veterans" listed. But, confusingly, later in the report we read this,
In general, suicide rates among armed forces veterans are lower than those in the general population. There is no evidence that, as a whole, people who have served their country in armed conflict are at higher risk of suicide.
So, it appears that veterans are not a target group for assistance either. What we do find later in the document is the following,

Timely identification and referral of women and children experiencing abuse or violence, so that they are able to benefit from appropriate support.

Call to End Violence against Women and Girls (2010), a cross-government strategy, has been followed by two cross-government action plans -

The Royal College of General Practitioners has produced an e-learning resource for GPs to enable them to identify and respond to victims of domestic violence more effectively.

Southall Black Sisters have developed a model of intervention on domestic violence amongst Black and Minority Ethnic women.

It seems not to have crossed the authors' minds that, if partner violence plays a role in causing suicide, then men, as the majority of suicide victims, might also " benefit from appropriate support ". This is despite the fact that there is evidence from the USA that domestic violence does indeed result in significant numbers of male suicides, Ref.[6].

What I was particularly interested in was the issue of suicide rates in men following partnership break-up. There is a degree of recognition of this in Ref.[5], as the following extracts illustrate,

Stressful life events can also play a part. These include.....family breakdown and conflict including divorce...

Factors associated with suicide in men include.....family and relationship problems including marital breakup and divorce....

A very obvious piece of required research is to discover if suicides peak, in men or women, after partnership break-ups.

However, whatever is written in Ref.[5] matters little. What matters is what is actually being done. At this point we discover that very few of the issues discussed in the Strategy document have actually resulted in action. This emerges more clearly from,

Ref.[7]: "The Policy Research Programme is currently investing £1.5m over three years into six suicide-related projects. They cover self-harming behaviour, the situation of LGBT youth and the role of the internet and social media in relation to suicidal behaviour."

Ref.[8]: "Suicide prevention strategy backed by £1.5m. Funding will be used to look at how the number of suicides can be reduced among people with a history of self-harm. Researchers will also focus on cutting suicides among children and young people and exploring how and why suicidal people use the internet."

These sources are consistent, though when I searched the Policy Research Programme, Ref.[9], I found only the work programme on self-harm, namely that led by Professor Keith Hawton at Oxford. However, I believe the bottom line as regards what is actually being done can be discerned from the Invitation to Tender, Ref.[10]. This calls for tenders against the budget of £1.5M in five areas,

How to reduce the risk of suicide in a key high-risk group: People with a History of Self-harm

How approaches and interventions can be tailored to improve mental health in specific groups

How self-harm can be better managed and suicide reduced in children and young people, including looked-after children and care leavers

How the media can be better supported in delivering sensible and sensitive approaches to suicide and suicidal behaviour

How the health and social care system can provide better information and support to those bereaved or affected by a suicide.

Incredible. Five areas of action and not one even mentioning men as the demographic resulting in 77% of suicides.

There is evidently no curiosity to discover why male suicides are so high - and specifically so in the 40-50 age range.

No research has been advised to investigate the impact of either domestic violence or partnership break-up on male suicide.

And the appalling rate of suicide in men's prisons is ignored, despite the knowledge of interventions which have been successful in women's prisons.

One is bound to ask: is this neglect of men deliberate policy or because compassion for men as a group simply does not occur to the people responsible?

If you were charged with reducing the suicide rate, wouldn't you want to tackle the demographic which leads to 77% of suicides? Would you perhaps start by identifying the reasons?

Perhaps they do not want to know the reasons. Perhaps they are frightened to pull at this loose thread in case what it unravels is the entirety of the men's rights grievances, such as listed on the home page?

The situation is no better in other countries. Steve Brule, Ref.[11], notes that a whole string of bodies authorised to address suicide in the USA and Canada simply fail to mention at all that the overwhelming majority of victims are male. Avoiding focussing on this fact means avoiding having to ask "why?". Tellingly, as Steve observes, surveys of well-being report that " in most advanced countries women report higher satisfaction and happiness than men" and " women around the world are happier than men, regardless of which happiness question is used" and " women are relatively happier in countries where gender rights are more equal ". It is hard to avoid the temptation of suggesting the logical negative of this: that men are less happy where they are less equal, and perhaps this is not unrelated to their high suicide rate?

On mentioning the high male suicide rate, many people will reply that women attempt suicide more often. Statistics on attempted suicide are harder to acquire. For one thing, it is not clear if an instance of self harm is actually a suicide attempt. For another, no statutory body is charged with collecting the data. Perhaps the best guidance on attempted suicide and self harm is from the Oxford group, whose latest report is Ref.[12]. The Group collates information on all cases of self-harm presenting to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. They have been doing so since 1976. The latest report indicates the following,

The sex ratio of people presenting with self-harm was 1.4 women to each man in 2010;

In 2011 there was a large increase over 2010 in males (+11.2%); the numbers of females showed a small decrease (-1.2%). This continues the trend of recent years;

On average each person presented 1.4 times (negligible difference between genders);

Of all self-harm episodes 70.7% involved self-poisoning;

Suicide intent scores (a measure of the extent to which patients truly wished to die) were in the high or very high range in 28.1% of assessed episodes;

Attempted suicides, unlike successful suicides, can be asked the reason. What emerges does not show very marked differences between the sexes, as shown by the Table below,

References

1. Office for National Statistics, "Suicides in the United Kingdom, 1981 to 2012", February 2014, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-332358

2. Elizabeth Scowcroft, "Suicide Statistics Report: Including data for 2010-2012", Samaritans, March 2014,

3. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/21/prisons-inspector-suicide-understaffing-overcrowding-mental-health-vulnerable-inmates?CMP=twt_gu

4. http://redpilluk.co.uk/CrimeAndPunishment.pdf

5. Preventing suicide in England: A cross-government outcomes strategy to save lives, HM Government, Mental Health and Disability Division, Department of Health, 10 September 2012.

6. Richard Davis, (2010) "Domestic violence‐related deaths", Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 2 Iss: 2, pp.44 - 52.

7. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/20/britain-male-suicide-rate-tragedy-failure

8. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/sep/10/suicide-prevention-strategy

9. Projects, initiatives and long-term programmes of research currently funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme, October 2011, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20131103140330/http://prp.dh.gov.uk/2011/10/21/prp-commissioned-projects-aug-20/

10. Department of Health Policy Research Programme, Invitation to Tender, Research Initiative to Support the Implementation of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy.

11. http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/world-suicide-and-the-world-happiness-report/

12. Keith Hawton, Deborah Casey, Elizabeth Bale, Dorothy Rutherford, Helen Bergen, Sue Simkin, Fiona Brand and Karen Lascelles, "Self-Harm in Oxford 2011", Oxford Centre for Suicide Research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1981, 2,466 women in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later the number in 2012 had almost halved to 1,391 (Ref.[1], see above graphic). In 1981, 4,129 men in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later the number in 2012 had risen to 4,590.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - This is what victory looks like in the Iraqi city of Ramadi: In the once thriving Haji Ziad Square, not a single structure still stands. Turning in every direction yields a picture of devastation.

A building that housed a pool hall and ice cream shops - reduced to rubble. A row of money changers and motorcycle repair garages - obliterated, a giant bomb crater in its place. The square's Haji Ziad Restaurant, beloved for years by Ramadi residents for its grilled meats - flattened. The restaurant was so popular its owner built a larger, fancier branch across the street three years ago. That, too, is now a pile of concrete and twisted iron rods.

The destruction extends to nearly every part of Ramadi, once home to 1 million people and now virtually empty. A giant highway cloverleaf at the main entrance to the city is partially toppled. Apartment block after apartment block has been crushed. Along a residential street, the walls of homes have been shredded away, exposing furniture and bedding. Graffiti on the few homes still standing warn of explosives inside.

When Iraqi government forces backed by U.S.-led warplanes wrested this city from Islamic State militants after eight months of IS control, it was heralded as a major victory. But the cost of winning Ramadi has been the city itself.

The scope of the damage is beyond any of the other Iraqi cities recaptured so far from the jihadi group. Photographs provided to The Associated Press by satellite imagery and analytics company DigitalGlobe show more than 3,000 buildings and nearly 400 roads and bridges were damaged or destroyed between May 2015, when Ramadi fell to IS, and Jan. 22, after most of the fighting had ended. Over roughly the same period, nearly 800 civilians were killed in clashes, airstrikes and executions.

Now the few signs of life are the soldiers manning checkpoints, newly painted and decorated with brightly colored plastic flowers. Vehicles pick their way around craters blocking roads as the dust from thousands of crushed buildings drifts over the landscape. Along one street, the only sign that houses ever existed there is a line of garden gates and clusters of fruit trees.

The wreckage was caused by IS-laid explosives and hundreds of airstrikes by the Iraqi military and the U.S.-led coalition. Besides the fighting itself, the Islamic State group is increasingly using a scorched earth strategy as it loses ground in Iraq. When IS fighters withdraw, they leave an empty prize, blowing up buildings and wiring thousands of others with explosives. The bombs are so costly and time-consuming to defuse that much of recently liberated Iraq is now unlivable.

"All they leave is rubble," said Maj. Mohammed Hussein, whose counterterrorism battalion was one of the first to move into Ramadi. "You can't do anything with rubble."

As a result, U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi officials are rethinking their tactics as they battle IS to regain territory. The coalition is scaling back its airstrikes in besieged urban areas. Efforts are underway to increase training of explosive disposal teams.

The new approach is particularly key as Iraq and the coalition build up to the daunting task of retaking Mosul, Iraq's second-biggest city, held by IS for nearly two years.

"They know they can't just turn Mosul into a parking lot," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad who has been present for a number of meetings with coalition and Iraqi defense officials regarding the Mosul operation. The diplomat commented on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

In January, after IS was pushed out of Ramadi, thousands of families returned to their homes. But residents have since been barred from coming back because dozens of civilians died from IS booby traps. Officials estimate IS planted thousands of IEDs, improvised explosive devices, across the city. Janus Global Operations, an American firm, began working to remove them last month and said it has so far cleared more than 1,000 square meters - a fraction of a city block.

The vast majority of the city's population remains displaced.

Ramadi lies on the Euphrates River west of Baghdad and is the capital of Iraq's Sunni heartland, Anbar province. Even as IS swept over most of the province and northern Iraq in 2014, Ramadi had held out under tenuous government control. After months of fighting, in May 2015, Islamic State fighters captured it by unleashing a barrage of truck and suicide bombs that overwhelmed government forces.

They raised their flag above Anbar Operations Command center, the former provincial police and military headquarters that was once a U.S. military base, then proceeded to largely level the complex with explosives. Over the following days, they methodically destroyed government buildings.

Militants took over homes, converting living rooms into command centers and bedrooms into barracks. They dug tunnels under the streets to evade air strikes, shut down schools, looted and destroyed the homes of people associated with the local government. They set up a headquarters in the campus of Anbar University, on the city's western edge.

Over the course of the eight-month campaign to push IS out of Ramadi, coalition aircraft dropped more than 600 bombs on the city. The strikes targeted IS fighters, but also destroyed bridges, buildings and roads, the Pentagon has acknowledged. Government forces seized districts on the outskirts and in December launched their final assault.

As Iraqi ground forces moved into Ramadi, IS methodically laid explosives and blew up swaths of the city's infrastructure. The electrical grid was almost completely destroyed and the city's water network was also heavily damaged. The jihadis bombed the city's remaining bridges and two dams. Though most of the population had already left, IS fighters tightened checkpoints along main roads out of the city to prevent civilians from fleeing. They later used families as human shields as they made their escape.

"ISIS made a concerted effort to ensure the city would be unlivable," said Patrick Martin, an Iraq researcher at the Institute for the Study of War.

As his convoy of troops approached Ramadi, Maj. Hussein said he watched IS fighters set fires in Anbar University to destroy sensitive documents. The fires burned for days.

The complex is now largely destroyed. A gymnasium used by IS to store documents has been torched. Charred sports equipment - a boxing glove, cleats, pieces of a track suit - line the hallways. Iraqi artillery fire punched thick holes into the university's library. Only the two main reading rooms are safe to visit; the rest of the four-story building is believed to be booby-trapped.

Trying to uproot dug-in fighters, coalition aircraft and Iraqi artillery unleashed devastation. Haji Ziad Square, for example, is a strategic intersection with lines of sight down major thoroughfares by which troops had to approach. So IS fighters deployed heavily there. The new multistory Haji Ziad Restaurant made a prime sniper post. Iraqi troops called in intense coalition strikes on the square to help clear the militants.

Similarly, a complex of around 40 large residential towers stood across from Anbar University on a key route for Iraqi forces entering the city. Before-and-after imagery shows at least a dozen of them were levelled. Multiple bomb craters are evident, including at least two that measure more than 45 feet across.

In a district along the western edge of downtown Ramadi, a dense strip of buildings, homes and bustling shops, not a single building escaped unscathed from the IS occupation and the coalition airstrikes. Key streets throughout the city are blocked by craters as each side tried to hamper the other's movement.

Tens of thousands of Ramadi's residents live in camps or with extended family in Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands are in other nearby villages. Thousands more live in a small resort town on Habbaniyah Lake south of Ramadi that has become a sprawling camp.

Where Iraqis came to jet-ski and boat as recently as 2012, the beach is now lined with tents. The 300-room hotel and hundreds of chalets in the complex are filled with people displaced from Ramadi, Fallujah, Hit and smaller villages across Anbar.

Umm Khaled, 30, once lived with her family in a two-bedroom home in Ramadi's center. Now, pregnant with her fourth child, she lives in a small shelter on the edge of the Habbaniyah resort that her husband built with corrugated metal and plastic tarps.

She said she kept tabs on her Ramadi home since fleeing two years ago. The house remained undamaged. Then the offensive to retake the city began, and she heard from another fleeing family that her home had been hit by a missile or a bomb. The day the city was declared liberated, Umm Khaled said the camp burst into celebration, children set off fireworks and young men danced.

Days later came more sobering news. Her husband returned to Ramadi to see what was left, and he brought back pictures on his phone.

"It was like there was nothing. And it's not just our house - the entire neighborhood," said Umm Khaled, who did not want her full name used because she feared for the safety of family members still living under IS rule.

Without a home to return to and no jobs, her family is forced to remain in the camp and is dependent on handouts from aid organizations. The little cash savings her family had was depleted months ago, making it impossible to return to Ramadi and rebuild.

According to the United Nations' satellite mapping agency, UNITAR, an estimated 5,700 buildings out of the city's total of around 55,000 were seriously damaged or destroyed.

With an eye to reducing destruction in the fight against IS moving forward, coalition planes are using fewer airstrikes and smaller, more targeted munitions.

In Hit - a small town to the west of Ramadi retaken from IS in April - Iraqi commanders complained that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get requests for airstrikes cleared by coalition forces. Brig. Gen. Sami Khathan al-Aradi said progress in Hit was slower because of the reduced airstrikes.

"Our allies have their own standards, their own regulations," al-Aradi explained, implying that Iraqi planes would have used airstrikes more liberally.

Mosul is roughly two-thirds larger in area than Ramadi, and some 1 million to 1.5 million residents are still in the city - a far higher number than those who were in Ramadi as Iraqi forces fought to regain it - putting large numbers in harm's way when an assault is launched.

The destruction of Mosul on the same scale as Ramadi would result not just in billions of dollars of damage. It also would risk further alienating the Sunni minority population. Long oppressed under the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad, some Sunnis originally welcomed IS fighters into Mosul and parts of Anbar province. But after months of increasingly brutal IS rule, the group's support among Sunnis appears to have eroded.

Widespread destruction also can spark cycles of revenge attacks within Anbar's communities, where tribal law often demands death and destruction be repaid in "blood money." In Ramadi's eastern edge, local security officials have already begun methodically razing homes of suspected IS sympathizers.

Hamdiya Mahmoud's family home was destroyed by IS militants. Amid the rubble that was once her son's bedroom, she points to a dresser showered with shards of plaster and concrete that was a gift to her son and his wife on their wedding day.

"I didn't let my youngest son go to school to save money to build this house," Mahmoud said, breaking into sobs, "This house is really priceless to me, it's like one of my sons." Mahmoud said she would not seek revenge for the damage done to the property. But as her husband looked over the ruins of his house, he was less forgiving.

"I swear to God," said Ali Hussein Jassim, "if I learn who did this I will not keep silent."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Iraq routed IS from Ramadi at a high cost: A city destroyed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - This is what victory looks like in the Iraqi city of Ramadi: In the once thriving Haji Ziad Square, not a single structure still stands. Turning in every direction yields a picture of devastation. A building that housed a pool hall and ice cream shops - reduced to rubble.

# data[].attributes.headline
Motivational speakers use statistics to mobilize others to take action and engage in advocacy.

# data[].attributes.subject
Motivational speakers use statistics to mobilize others to take action and engage in advocacy.

# data[].attributes.body
In fact, in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of mean between 20-40 years of age" (p12

# data[].attributes.body
"I was 10 then more than 400 schools were destroyed" (p11).