How to Help Men

others too, but mostly men

Photo by Faris Mohammed on Unsplash

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This post discusses suicide, suicide prevention, and related topics. Call or text 988 if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or feelings. Their website also offers chat and video call options, including with ASL interpreters.

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Men are in trouble.

Death by suicide in the West is increasing across the board, but the numbers are especially grim for men.

Men are vastly overrepresented in suicide statistics, especially when it comes to deaths by violent means. And yet, despite the frequency with which it happens, it’s still talked about carelessly — or worse, not at all.

This essay is about something you can actually do to help.

Suicide contagion is real. It’s measurable. It’s robustly documented. This isn’t flimsy social science. It’s not one of those correlation-equals-causation headlines you scroll past on Twitter.

This isn’t bullshit getting called “science.”

This is a phenomenon that has been observed, studied, and understood for over a century.

And it matters more than ever, because in 2025, nearly everyone is a content creator. You don’t have to be a journalist or an influencer for your words to reach people when they’re at their most vulnerable. A Facebook post, a tweet, a YouTube comment — these things travel. And they can help. Or they can push a vulnerable person towards death.

There are known, evidence-based ways to reduce suicide contagion. That means that if you're discussing suicide in general — and especially if you're talking about a celebrity death — how you talk about it can make a life-or-death difference.

But What About Free Speech?

First, please note that I am not advocating for the government, any platform, or anyone else to force you to do what I’m suggesting. I’m trying to persuade you to do so, with reasons, but it’s up to you to be persuaded, or not.

Understandably, a lot of people bristle at the idea that they should tailor their content for other people’s mental health. They don’t want to feel responsible for how others might interpret their words. They worry that being careful means being fake — that it's performative, or even censorship.

I get that.

But here's the thing: you already adjust your behavior when something matters. You don’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. You don’t laugh at funerals (unless you’re Irish). And once you know that suicide contagion is real, ignoring it becomes a kind of recklessness — one I’m hoping to persuade you to avoid.

Case Study: Robin Williams

When Robin Williams died by suicide in 2014, the media coverage was irresponsible to an extreme degree. The “sad clown” trope was paraded around like gospel. Headlines romanticized his pain. Articles described in graphic detail the method of his death.

The consequences were deadly. In the five months that followed, suicides in the U.S. increased by nearly 10%, with an estimated 1,841 additional deaths, mostly among men. Even more striking, there was a 32% spike in suicides by the same method that Williams used.

That’s not speculation. That’s data. It was preventable. Journalists nearly all get training in this stuff, but they didn’t care.

You don’t want your morality to be reasonably compared to that of a journalist, do you?

Now compare that to the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain in 2018 — two major celebrity suicides just days apart. This time, media outlets were more restrained. Fewer graphic details. More links to crisis resources. The spike in suicides that followed was still real — but only about half the size of the spike after Robin Williams. Two deaths, handled better, with much less loss of life.

Why It Matters

There are many psychological theories for why suicide contagion works the way it does. But the one that matters most — the one you have to understand — is this:

A suicidal mind is broken.

It is not operating in full rationality. It’s fogged. It latches onto patterns and examples and easy exits. It seeks confirmation that the pain is permanent, and that the only way out is to die. Your job, if you care at all, is not to feed that story.

That means you might have to fight your own instinct to "debunk" something that seems irrational. You might feel tempted to argue, “Well, that doesn’t make logical sense, so it doesn’t really matter if I say it that way.”

But here’s the contradiction: you’re trying to apply logic to a broken system.

Of course it doesn’t make sense. That’s the point.

To repeat, and hopefully emphasize: I am telling you how broken minds tend to work, so if you’re bristling — if you want to argue, “Ah, but rationally, that makes no sense, so I don’t need to consider changing anything for the sake of the irrationally broken minds that might be exposed to it!” then, well, I hope you can see the contradiction.

What To Do and Not Do

Language That Helps:

• Say “died by suicide”, not “committed suicide.”
  Why? Because it’s more honest. “Committed” is for crimes. “Died” is what actually happened. It de-romanticizes it and forces reality to show up. “Committing suicide” can be a dramatic plot twist. Dying is something else.

• Say “non-fatal attempt”, not “unsuccessful attempt.”
  Why? Because “unsuccessful” carries the grotesque implication that death would have been a success. The goal isn’t death. The goal is help.

• Avoid phrases like “he lost his battle with mental illness.”
  Why? It sounds noble — but again, it implies inevitability. Suicide is not a foregone conclusion. Survivors exist. Recovery is possible.

• Avoid graphic descriptions of method, location, or note content.
  Why? Because suicidal people often lack executive function, and when methods are spelled out, it lowers the barrier. It makes impulsive deaths more likely. Depression saps energy, and a lot of us are still here to talk about surviving our depression because suicide requires energy. Providing details can provide a plan — or even just a mental model — and thus lowers the required energy.

Other Best Practices

• Include a brief content warning and a link to resources, like the one at the top of this post.

• Avoid romanticizing, glorifying, or mythologizing the person who died.
  Talk about the pain they were in. Talk about how loved they were. But do not suggest that their death was meaningful or redemptive. It wasn’t. They are just gone.

• Do not share stories of agony in those left behind. The last message you want to send is that “if you die, the people who are currently letting you down will feel the full weight of their failure.” The show “Sister Wives” has done a good job of striking the balance — showing the person was loved and is missed, but also communicating quite clearly that life, including for the people who let the dead person down, goes on without them. I wrote about that here.

• Share stories of survival. Post links to resources. Normalize getting help.

If You Want to Help Men, Start Here

Men are less likely to seek help. They’re more likely to use lethal means. They are far more likely to die when they become suicidal. That’s the bleak truth.

But here’s the hopeful truth: you can help. You don’t have to be a therapist or a crisis responder. You just have to be careful with your words.

And maybe that doesn’t feel like much — but a metric fuckton of robust, replicated data says otherwise.

The way we talk about suicide does shape behavior.

So if you’re going to talk about it at all, talk like someone’s life might depend on it.

Because it might.

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Further Reading and Resources

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – Call or text 988 anytime.

• Reporting on Suicide Media Recommendations – Practical guidelines for journalists, bloggers, and anyone talking publicly about suicide.

• Samaritans Media Guidelines – Excellent for understanding impact of coverage.

• How to Keep Breathing, No Matter How Much Things Suck – My essay on how to not die by suicide is a good link to drop when these discussions come up. That’s not self-aggrandizement; I’ve got thirty-odd emails from people thanking me for helping them decide to stay.

• The Club Nobody Deserves to Join – My essay on the trauma of discovering a suicide, and how it alters your relationship to the idea of death. If you suspect someone in your life has that experience — or just an unusual relationship to the idea of death more generally, it may help you understand.

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Edited to Add:

Paid subscriptions normally go to my student loan balance, but on this post, they’re going to 22Zero, an organization that fights suicide among veterans of the US Military. If you’d rather donate to 22Zero directly, email your receipt to hollymathnerd at gmail dot com and I’ll comp you a year’s paid subscription.