The Suicide Gap
We are reminded daily in the media of the plethora of gaps purporting to prove women are seriously disadvantaged in our society. The most often repeated of these is, of course, the so-called pay gap (of which more in a later article).
But the one I’d like to draw your attention to today is a real gap, revealing a very big difference between the genders in the UK. One I will call the suicide gap.
It is not widely known that about three times as many men as women commit suicide each year in the UK. This ratio has changed slightly throughout recent years but occurs across all age groups about equally. The peak difference is the 30-39 age group where there are 4 male suicides to each female.
For example, in 2005 3,223 men and 1,113 women committed suicide in England & Wales. (Mind Factsheet http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Factsheets/Statistics/Statistics+2.htm)
Our current survey into family law suggests that being denied a relationship with your children is a major risk factor in suicide. Disturbingly, 36% of survey respondents who are applying for contact with their children in the family courts report suicidal thoughts and a surprising 7% say they actually attempted suicide.
Figures for attempted suicide for the population at large are hard to come by, but the best estimate I could find puts it at about 0.1% of the population. This means a parent denied access to their children could be about seventy times as likely to attempt suicide as the general population!
This does seem supported by anecdotal reports which often attribute two male suicides a week to loss of their children after divorce or separation. In fact, (in light of our survey results) this strikes me as likely being very likely a serious under-estimate.
We can only guess how many of these suicides every year are attributable to family law issues, but we do know that far more men than women are denied contact with their children with 95% of contact applications in the courts being made by men.
Perhaps this simple fact accounts for most of the suicide gap?
I am not in the least surprised at these facts. My son is currently in the throes of trying to obtain his parental rights and responsibilities(PRR’s)for his daughter through the family courts. He missed out on having these basic human rights by six weeks. His daughter was born six weeks before an amendment to scottish law deemed automatic PRR’s on all parents regardless of marital status provided both parents sign the birth certificate in May 2006. They then did not make this amendment retrospective. This has been wihout a doubt the worst year of his and our lives. His ex fiance is assumed guiltless, every evil false allegation made against my son is taken as gospel. He is fighting for his human rights and for those of his daughter. It is inconceivable to us that his daughter be left under the full charge of her mother who is obviously without consience or integrity. The government not having this law retrospective is discriminatory against the most vulnerable of society and I hold them responsible for the detrimental effect this is and will have on my granddaughter and my son. I would be grateful for any advice on how best to approach the European courts on this matter.
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