Tuesday March 14 7:57 PM ET
Divorced Men More Likely to Commit Suicide-Study
LONDON (Reuters) - A U.S. study has shown that men who are separated or divorced are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than their married or attached counterparts, researchers said Wednesday.
Men are not as good as women in dealing with the trauma of splitting up and do not have the same support networks as women to help them cope.
``Marital status, especially divorce, has a strong net effect on mortality from suicide, but only among men,'' Augustine Kposowa said in a report in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
An analysis of the cause of death of 472,000 men and women between 1979-1989 by the sociologist at the University of California in Riverside showed that being single or widowed had no impact on suicide rates.
Divorce was a factor in male suicides regardless of the man's age, income or level of education but had little impact on female suicides.
``It may be that marriage confers health and many other advantages that divorced people lack,'' said Kposowa. ``Marriage offers security and social support, and as a result, the married may be happier than the divorced.''
Kposowa also found that men living in the western United States had a higher risk of taking their own lives than men from other parts of the country.
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