By Leah Campbell
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, men died by suicide at a rate of 3.54 percent higher than women in 2017.
Mental Health America reports 6 million men are affected by depression in the United States every single year.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism puts the annual number of men dying due to alcohol-related causes at 62,000, compared to 26,000 women.
And men are also two to three times more likely to misuse drugs than women.
Depression and suicide are ranked as a leading cause of death among men, and yet they’re still far less likely to seek mental health treatment than women.
“I think part of it may be this macho thing,” Dr. Raymond Hobbs, a physician consultant at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, told Healthline. “A lot of guys don’t want to admit they have this problem. They still see depression as a sign of weakness.”
He was clear that this type of thinking is outdated, a relic of previous generations that doesn’t speak to the current medical understanding of mental illness.
“We know so much more now, and we recognize the chemical changes that take place. In many ways, mental illness is just like diabetes, or any other physical condition,” he said.
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