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Suicide gender differences

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Summary of story from USA Today, September 10, 2011

Men are almost twice as likely as women to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the face or head, according to a study by the University of Akron and Ohio State University.

It analysed 621 suicides in Ohio between 1997 and 2006.

The study also found that for every unit increase in blood-alcohol level, there was a 10 percent increase in the likelihood of using this method to commit suicide.

The authors said understanding gender differences in suicide is important for suicide prevention.

Vanity was not necessarily the reason why women who commit suicide with a firearm were more likely to avoid methods that result in facial disfiguration, said study authors Valerie Callanan of the University of Akron and Mark Davis of the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State University.

“To suggest that women are less likely to shoot themselves in the face or head because they are more concerned about their appearance than men is to minimize the significance of the act of suicide,” the report said.

“What we do know is that those experiencing stressful life events are at far greater risk of employing an especially lethal method of suicide than those not experiencing such events.”

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