21-04-2025
Fewer friends, outlets and direction: Why boys are dying by suicide at an inordinate pace.
If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
When Dr. Jeffrey Karst sits down with boys for therapy sessions, he sometimes has to peel back extra layers of behaviors learned over time. There's the veil of stoic indifference, what it means to be a man, and the sense that sharing feelings is a sign of weakness.
That hasn't been helped by the recent culture wars dictating the definitions of masculinity, said Karst, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
"That can make some boys feel very hopeless about their future if they don't match what is expected of them in our current society," Karst said. "It's really hard for a lot of the boys I talk to to think about what values are important to (them) and what is actually going to be valued in society. They feel very alone."
Breaking through to access the child's radical authentic self, as Karst describes it, is increasingly important at a time when young men aged 18 to 24 in Wisconsin are nearly four times more likely to die by suicide than young women in that same age range, according to data published by the state Office of Children's Mental Health Tuesday.
Even prior to new adulthood, however, boys between 10 and 17 were more than twice as likely than girls to die by suicide, the factsheet found.
Part of the challenge with boys, said Karst, comes down to combatting traditional masculine stereotypes. Another challenge, Karst said, is access to firearms, the most lethal means of suicide.
"There's been a few inflection points, including the pandemic, but a lot of these are long-standing challenges," Karst said.
While men make up 50% of the U.S. population, research shows that four out of five suicide deaths from 2023 were men. What's more, the youngest generations of men, Gen Z (18-23) and Zillennial (24-30), are reporting the highest levels of emotional distress and suicidal thoughts compared to other generations of men.
Surveys also revealed that, compared to men 30 years prior, more than a quarter of young men don't have meaningful social connections. At the same time, most young men feel misunderstood by women.
Men also express their emotional distress differently than women. Typically, boys and men present with a more brusque exterior: irritability and anger on one end, withdrawal on the other.
In Wisconsin, anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts have increased among high school boys, according to the 2023 Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Report. More than a third of high school boys said they were anxious; another quarter reported feeling a persistent sadness or hopelessness.
The picture of a traditional male breadwinner and protector of the family has shifted dramatically over the decades. And while redefining those traditions has helped expand narrow ideas of gender and broaden career possibilities for girls and young women, some boys may feel they are at an impasse.
For Linda Hall, executive director of the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health, this comes through as boys and young men not seeing a place for themselves in the future.
"We're not looking at boys for those traditional roles anymore, so the question becomes, 'What are we building towards?' and 'Where are we trying to go?'" Hall said.
That sense of loss pans out in a few ways. Fewer boys are graduating from college, if they go at all, Hall said. Where Wisconsin women aged 25-34 received their college degrees 42% of the time, just 32% of Wisconsin men in that same age group received theirs, according to the Brookings Institute.
It also conjures existential dread, Karst said. For the boys Karst treats, if they are unable to see their value in society, they won't feel value in themselves. That opens the door to other vulnerabilities.
"When they don't feel value, when they feel alone, sometimes they're drawn into these fringe groups where misogyny and scapegoating occur, rather than actually just finding support," Karst said.
Compounding that, boys and young men typically don't reach out to one another when they're struggling, Karst said. Some of that is the result of not having close connections in the first place. Karst noted that, even 15 years ago, playing video games was a social hobby. Now, most boys play video games with people they know, but they're doing so with headphones on alone in their rooms.
If they talk, it tends to be online, which robs young people of seeing the consequences of their words. For example, if you're teasing someone and see them react tearfully, chances are you'll change your tone, Karst said. But missing those basic cues can build into a larger problem.
"They're really missing that opportunity to connect with friends on an actual emotional level," Karst said.
When one of Hall's sons was struggling in school, he went to a school psychologist. At first, it didn't go well. He didn't open up. Talking about feelings in an office space wasn't comfortable. The psychologist decided to turn the appointment into a walking session.
They went outside and walked the perimeter of the school.
"That was fundamental. That was life-changing, because he felt a connection to her," Hall said.
Later, when he got to high school, he recommended the same psychologist to his other male friends. On another occasion, when Hall suggested a therapist put a basketball hoop in his office, her son felt able to open up because he had another activity he could put some of that tension toward.
Hall and Karst both said that when adults, and especially male adults, model healthy behaviors, it can help normalize emotional expressions. That might look like verbalizing your own feelings and asking your son, without judgment, about his feelings. For Karst, modeling is the biggest way to help boys and young men reach out.
In-person socializing through hobbies and extracurriculars, can also create a sense of solidarity and bonding. Taking time, more generally, to go outside offers natural serotonin boosts and is really easy to do, Hall said.
"Adults really need to see beyond what can present as just disruptive or combative behavior," Karst said. "It can really represent true emotional suffering."
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@ or view her X (Twitter) profile at @natalie_eilbert.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: In Wisconsin, young men die by suicide at 4 times the rate of girls
