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1 results

  • 35 - Women and Suicidal Behavior

  • from Section 6 - Health and Well-Being
  • Edited by Fanny M. Cheung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Diane F. Halpern, Claremont McKenna College, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of the International Psychology of Women
    Published online:
    20 July 2020
    Print publication:
    06 August 2020, pp 497-513

  • Summary

    An often-cited finding in US-driven suicidology is that women have higher rates of suicidal behavior, and lower suicide rates than men. This pattern, however, is not representative of the global suicidality picture. In Asian countries, female and male suicide rates are similar. To stimulate new thinking about female suicidality, we put China at the center of our analysis, and the United States at the periphery, and then discussed the insights generated by this reversal. Insights include that the US-centered canon is caught in the mental illness paradigm; and that it generalizes to women assumptions and evidence that mainly apply to men. For example, China’s data challenge dominant assumptions that marriage offers suicide protection. For many Chinese rural women, suicide is an act of despair and protest against suffocating marriages and communities – not a plea for closer ties (nor an expression of mental illness). China’s evidence, including that women’s suicide-mortality has significantly dropped since urbanization, supports a paradigm-shift in suicidology.