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I'd like to offer a different perspective.

Suicide is a violent crime, the killing of a human being.

Now, if we believe Wikipedia, then around 90% of homicides in the US will be committed by males. It seems reasonable that the male-female ratio should be about the same in the UK.

Then a 0.8 ratio of male to female suicides could be accounted for by the increased male homicide rate alone.

The Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime

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For whatever reason, men tend to choose more lethal forms of self harm (guns, cars) than women (cutting, pills)

Maybe it's that gap in STEM education we hear about that leads to women being unable to choose properly lethal methods.

Perhaps men access certain modes of physical violence (guns?) more easily, but how are the psychological states of murder and suicide related at all? I understand amok/revenge murder-suicides but most suicides aren't that. "Violent crime" doesn't seem like a useful way to carve up reality here.

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