We Keep Asking the Wrong Question About Men and Suicide
- 11 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Introduction from Steve Whittle
When John sent me this piece, what struck me was that it asks a question that sits very close to the work we do at Tough To Talk, but approaches it from a slightly different direction.
At Tough To Talk, we spend a lot of time looking at what happens before crisis: behaviour, silence, pressure, isolation, help-avoidance and the reasons support can exist without ever being reached.
John asks us to look even further upstream.
At meaning.
Belonging.
Purpose.
And what happens when someone begins to question whether they are needed at all.
This is not an argument that suicide has one simple cause. It doesn’t. Nor is it a criticism of crisis intervention or mental health services. Those services matter and save lives.
It is an invitation to widen the lens.
If we genuinely want to reduce the number of men reaching suicidal crisis, we need to be curious about everything that may be happening long before that crisis becomes visible.
I think John raises an uncomfortable but important question:
What makes a life feel necessary to the person living it?
It is a conversation worth having.
Steve Whittle
Founder, Tough To Talk
We Keep Asking the Wrong Question About Men and Suicide
I recently attended a men’s mental health conference that, like many others, centred heavily around suicide. The conversations were sincere, concerned and full of good intentions. People care deeply about the number of men dying, and rightly so. Yet I left with an uncomfortable feeling that we may be directing too much of our effort towards the later stages of the problem.
Almost every discussion revolved around prevention. How do we prevent suicide? How do we reduce suicide?
What struck me was that suicide was being spoken about almost as though it were a disease in its own right. Something pathological that could be targeted directly. Something located inside the individual that, if treated correctly, would disappear.
But suicide is not a condition. It is an outcome.
When a man ends his life, the act itself may be the final point in a much longer and more complex period of distress. Yet much of our cultural and institutional attention gathers around that final step. We build crisis responses, intervention frameworks and risk assessments, all of which matter, but many of which are designed for the point at which distress or suicide risk has already become visible.
We are trying to interrupt the conclusion without always understanding enough about what may have been developing beforehand.
So the question I kept returning to was not only why men are dying by suicide, but why some men reach a point where continuing to live no longer feels necessary.
That is a very different question, and a far less comfortable one.
In my work as a counsellor, I rarely meet men who simply want help in the way we tend to imagine help. What I meet far more often is a kind of disorientation. A man will describe functioning perfectly well on the surface - working, talking, carrying responsibilities - yet underneath there is a persistent sense that none of it actually requires him. Life continues, but it does not feel as though his existence makes a meaningful difference to anything.
Modern support systems are largely built to reduce distress. They aim to stabilise mood, regulate thoughts and keep people safe. This is important work, however the absence of suffering is not the same thing as the presence of purpose.
You can make a life bearable without making it meaningful, and for some men, meaning, belonging and purpose may be important factors in whether life continues to feel worth enduring.
Across history male identity has often been achieved rather than assumed. It has been tied to building, protecting, providing, mastering and contributing. These were not merely social expectations but orientation systems. They answered a basic psychological question: where am I needed?
Traditional expectations around male identity have changed considerably. Many of those changes have been necessary and positive. But for some men who have built their sense of identity around providing, protecting, working or being needed, change can also create difficult questions about where they now find purpose, belonging and contribution.
A number of men may experience not freedom from responsibility, but a growing sense that they are optional.
Human beings can tolerate remarkable levels of difficulty when they believe they are required somewhere. What they struggle to tolerate is irrelevance.
From the outside we understandably see suicide as a tragedy that must be prevented.
For some men, suicidal thinking may develop alongside a long erosion of purpose, belonging or a sense of being needed. For others, the pathway will look very different. It may not be a dramatic collapse, but a gradual change in how someone understands their own place in the world.
This is the part that is rarely discussed openly because it does not sit easily inside a medical model.
You cannot prescribe usefulness.
You cannot clinically assign meaning.
You cannot standardise a sense that the world genuinely needs you to be in it.
We continue to focus on stopping death, which is measurable, while struggling to address meaning, which is not.
None of this denies the role of mental illness. Severe depression narrows thought and distorts perception, and many suicides occur within that cognitive constriction. But not all expressions of wanting to die come from the same place, and treating every case as purely pathological risks missing something central in male experience.
Nor should any of this suggest that suicide can be reduced to a loss of purpose. Suicide is complex and usually involves multiple interacting factors. These may include mental ill-health, trauma, relationships, financial pressure, physical health, substance use, shame, isolation and many others.
Purpose is not the explanation for male suicide.
But I believe it is one part of the conversation that deserves more attention.
If a man experiences himself as unnecessary for long enough, the question may eventually shift from “how do I cope with life?” to “why am I continuing it at all?”
By the time this appears outwardly as suicidal thinking, some of the pressures contributing to it may have been present for years in less visible forms.
Perhaps the problem we are trying to solve is not only suicide, but the disappearance of reasons to remain alive.
Crisis intervention matters. It can save lives when someone is in immediate danger. But much of what we currently describe as suicide prevention is still concentrated towards the later stages of distress.
Prevention can and should begin much further upstream.
If we want to reduce the number of men reaching that point, we may need to take seriously a question that sits outside medicine and policy but at the centre of psychology:
**What makes a life feel necessary to the person living it?**
Until we address that question with the same energy we devote to crisis intervention, we may continue responding compassionately to crisis while overlooking some of the experiences that can develop long before it.
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Support
If this article has raised concerns for you or someone you know, support is available.
If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.
Samaritans:** Call 116 123, free day or night.
Shout:** Text SHOUT to 85258.
NHS 111:** For urgent health advice.
Tough To Talk is not a crisis service. We work upstream of crisis, helping workplaces, charities and communities recognise distress earlier, reach in sooner and support men before crisis develops.
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About John
John is a counsellor whose work includes supporting men experiencing distress and difficult periods in their lives.
His reflections in this article draw on his counselling experience and explore how purpose, belonging, identity and the experience of feeling needed may form part of the wider conversation about male distress and suicide prevention.
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