Citation

Rockett IRH. Int. Rev. Mod. Sociol. 2017; 43(1): 5-32.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Serials Publications)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This essay employs a social constructionist perspective to reassess the gender gap in US suicide rates during the early 21st century. Male rates well exceed female rates. However, suicide is undercounted, and undercounting is nonrandom by gender and method. Female suicides frequently select drug intoxication and other poisoning, a less forensically overt method than the predominant male methods of shooting and hanging. Most drug-intoxication deaths are mischaracterized as "accidents" or unintentional in the vital statistics. Expanding self-injury mortality, to integrate these deaths with known suicides, reveals greater narrowing of the gender rate gap than evident from the suicide data alone.

Language: en