A sharp rise in the number of women who end up in hospital because of severe self-harm has led Suicide Prevention Australia to call for more to be done to help suicidal women.
Suicide Prevention Australia chief executive Sue Murray said men accounted for four out of five suicide deaths, but the justified focus on trying to reduce male suicides had led to the rising rates of female self-harm to be overlooked.
“We know that too often, women who present with self-harm don’t get treated with significant seriousness, don’t get directed to further support services, and instead are treated with less-than-optimal care and less-than-optimal consideration,” she said.
The discussion paper released on Tuesday found that while young men’s suicide rates had fallen since a peak in 1997, the same could not be said for young women’s suicides. And the number of women who caused such severe harm to themselves they ended up in hospital had increased 50 per cent since the turn of the century.
Ms Murray said more needed to be done to train staff and prevent stigma towards women who self-harmed, but also to understand which women who injured themselves were most likely to go on to suicide.
“The majority of people who self-harm do not go on to take their own lives, and the problem is we don’t know which ones will,” she said.
The report found different factors may be involved in the suicide of women and men, and that a “gendered” approach to suicide programs was needed. While 36 per cent of male suicides were found to involve alcohol, this fell to 28 per cent of female suicides.
Paradoxically, while men have a higher rate of death by suicide, women have higher rates of behaviour such as planning or thinking about suicide.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were particularly at risk, with a suicide rate more than four times greater than average.
Lesbian and bisexual women also experience much higher levels of distress, with 38 per cent experiencing depression – double the rate of heterosexual women. Non-heterosexual women were also more than four times as likely to have tried to harm or kill themselves in the past six months.
“The substantial attention on suicide prevention for men reflects the high importance of this pressing global issue,” the report says. “However, given the large swing in the size of the health burden towards women when suicide mortality and morbidity are combined, it would seem both reasonable and sensible to focus also on understanding and preventing women’s suicidal behaviour.”
The report made eight recommendations, including that mandatory procedures for treating women who attempted suicide be introduced, and that strategies be introduced to target female suicide.
Help is available from Lifeline: 13 11 14.
Specialised services for Indigenous Australians can be found at the Social and Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Service.
LGBQTI services can be reached at MindOUT! and QLife 1800 184 527.