Masculine norms and suicide

From Correlates of non-receipt of formal mental health services among Australian men experiencing thoughts of suicide by Samantha Tang, Natalie M.Reily, Philip J.Batterham, Brian Draper, Fiona Shand, Jin Han, Bani Aadam, and Helen Christensen.  From the Discussion.  

Although we found that conformity to masculine norms was associated with non-receipt of services in the bivariate analyses, this variable did not remain significant in the regression analysis. This lack of relationship was somewhat surprising given the significant body of literature examining the link between help-seeking behaviors and beliefs about masculinity and self-reliance among men (Pirkis et al., 2017; Struszczyk et al., 2019), and may be attributable to the poor factor structure of the global masculinity score for the CMNI-22 (Owen, 2011). Further, contrary to our hypothesis and existing research (Rice et al., 2020; Tang et al., 2022), we found that service use was not associated with treatment stigma, attitudinal barriers or experience of situational stressors such as job loss, financial distress, or relationship breakdown. We also did not find an association between non-receipt of services and both impulsivity and use of drugs and/or alcohol as a coping mechanism. Taken together, the lack of association between the aforementioned variables and service use further suggests that severity and chronicity of suicidality are the primary correlates of service receipt among men experiencing thoughts of suicide.

There is a trope in academia and among pundits that male suicide is related to toxic masculinity or conformance to masculine norms.  This study, limited as it is, finds that there is no such relationship.  That those seeking assistance related to suicide and those not seeking assistance demonstrate the same behavioral traits.