I am going to go ahead and say that if males die five times as often from suicide, that seems more important than the number of attempts. It is kind of stunning, or at least it should be, to have five boys die for every girl that dies, and for newspapers and experts to make it sound like girls have it worse here.
I think the strength of your objection here depends on which of two possible underlying models is at play:
The boys who attempt suicide and the girls who attempt suicide are in pretty much the same mental state when they attempt suicide (that is: definitely wanting to end their life). But, for whatever reason, the boys use more effective methods, and so they end up actually dying at a higher rate.
There are two categories of mental states for suicide-attempters: one in which they genuinely and definitely want to die, and will therefore seek out and use effective methods; and one in which they are ok with dying but also would be ok with living and receiving attention, in which case they may use a less effective method
If (1) is the case, then I think it is at least arguable that girls have it worse here, since they end up in the mental state of “definitely wanting to die” more often than boys, and that sucks. That said, it’s still true that they’re not actually dying as much, and so I think it’s still kinda disingenuous to frame it the way the newspaper and experts have here.
If (2) is the case, then that means that boys are ending up in the “definitely wanting to die” state much more often than girls, in which case I’d agree that it’s very wrong to say that girls have it worse.
I think the strength of your objection here depends on which of two possible underlying models is at play:
The boys who attempt suicide and the girls who attempt suicide are in pretty much the same mental state when they attempt suicide (that is: definitely wanting to end their life). But, for whatever reason, the boys use more effective methods, and so they end up actually dying at a higher rate.
There are two categories of mental states for suicide-attempters: one in which they genuinely and definitely want to die, and will therefore seek out and use effective methods; and one in which they are ok with dying but also would be ok with living and receiving attention, in which case they may use a less effective method
If (1) is the case, then I think it is at least arguable that girls have it worse here, since they end up in the mental state of “definitely wanting to die” more often than boys, and that sucks. That said, it’s still true that they’re not actually dying as much, and so I think it’s still kinda disingenuous to frame it the way the newspaper and experts have here.
If (2) is the case, then that means that boys are ending up in the “definitely wanting to die” state much more often than girls, in which case I’d agree that it’s very wrong to say that girls have it worse.
It also depends if you are going “suicide bad because people dying is bad” or “high suicide rates are evidence for a large number of unhappy people”.
I don’t think this distinction was made in the post.