Global Health Balance
Introduction
Gender balance is one of the most common issues that fight against discrimination of individuals concerning their gender. However, gender equality has been seen to fight for women’s rights, thus neglecting the male gender, especially in terms of health care provision. Male gender is left out, especially when looking into mental health due to the existence of stereotypes that take females as weaker sex; thus, their problems are looked into with more care than their male counterparts. Neglecting male health has led to an increase in mood disorders, especially stress, depression, and suicidal behavior. The multiple mental health disorder in males is attributed to little attention given to challenges facing males, thus bearing the burden of solving their problems.
Why men die at Higher Rate of Suicide than Women
There are reasons why men die of suicide compared to women as they choose more lethal methods of committing suicide compared to females. Many women attempt suicide more than males; however, most males are serious about it and end up completing suicide. Male use more sure ways such as firearms, while women’s main aim is to get their problems solved while males seek the termination of their problems’ solution in committing suicide. According to Brooks (2020), suicide is the biggest single killer for men under 45 years old. Women’s suicide rates are a third of men’s number of men. Since the emergency of mental health awareness campaigns, there is a greater understanding of potential contributing factors.
Attention by WHO
Men have a general tendency of failing to seek help when the mental problem challenges them. This makes it difficult for one to come up relevant to come up with the solution for this health issue. The general reluctance and stigma regarding suicide-related concerns are associated with an increase in self-harm ideation, thus ending up committing suicide. However, few preventive efforts are geared toward making mental health a significant public health problem (Brooks, 2020). The World Health Organization has developed epidemiological campaign campaigns to impact knowledge in all men concerning their mental health and suicide ideation.
Thoughts on Deaths
creating blame on public health for neglecting male’s mental health who commit suicide is not a positive step to take when aiming to reduce the number of deaths by suicide and homicide. However, it is advisable that root-cause analysis study to be conducted to identify the specific cause. The public health needs to come up with advisory groups that help men to come up with other solutions to their problems other than committing suicide. Suicide prevention programs need to be increased to investigate and reduce suicide ideation among males who will surely reduce the number of cases.
Why across all WHO Regions
The reason suicide ideation and deaths are prevalent across all WHO regions may be attributed to many factors. For instance, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (2016) notes that men receive less behavioral treatment than women due to their reluctance to recognize or acknowledge that they could benefit from behavioral health services. Other than that, the clinicians fail to recognize depression in men, thus do not refer them to relevant health services on time.
Government Improving Women Health not Men
Male perception of mental health such perceived shame and prejudice can be related to an increase in the number of suicide and homicide among men. Public health has concentrated much on women’s health, thus seen to neglect men. Reaching a large number of males requires public health to increase community health campaigns that are male-targeted. Women’s health challenges are more direct than males as they are ready to communicate and seek solutions; thus, the health sector acts on them more readily (Suicide Prevention Resource Center, 2016). To mitigate the health imbalance among both genders, they should look at other problems that may lead to suicide, such as drug and substance abuse.
The Population Health Problem
Various interventions to balance male and female mental health need to be acted upon fast as this gap may lead to more adverse effects than suicide alone. Neglecting male mental health will increase their mortality rate, morbidity, and, thus, productivity. The data from the world health organization demographic survey already shows suicide and homicide as the single leading cause of mortality; therefore, different governments are encouraged to develop more male-targeted methods of improving their mental health.
References
Brooks, A. C. (2020). We Need to Pay More Attention to the Epidemic of Suicide.
Suicide Prevention Resource Center. (2016). Preventing suicide among men in the middle years: Recommendations for suicide prevention programs.