what do you think or what are you attributing this increase in young male Sude to you've talked about the sedation male sedation hypothesis yeah which I find very interesting which is around obviously around it's about drugs but it's also about ponography and video games and I think it's consistent with this idea of a retreat and and a and a kind of pulling away from the difficulties and challenges of modern society I think that's number one and it's very interesting if you look at drug poisonings which is separate from suicide one of the reasons that's risen
so much among men and perhaps we can talk a bit about that um is because uh the sorts of drugs that the men are taking they are very often taking them on their own so there's no one there to revive them this is not these are not party drugs these are not the drugs that the kids were taking when you were doing your job as a bouncer right this is not let's take this and go out and have a you know have a good laugh this is these are drugs of retreat and my sense is
that among many young men the they don't feel that sure about the extent to which they are needed and valued and in the end that seems to be the best predictor in the end that some will take their own lives is that they have come to believe that the world will be better off without them or that they're kind of not needed I think one of the best protectors against losing a life to suicide is a real Clarity that the world needs you that your ab absence from the world will be bad and increasingly I
think particularly young men without much economic power perhaps not quite sure where to go what to do do end up being unconvinced that the world is actually better off with them than without them I I I think that the state of feeling unneeded is literally fatal uh through drugs through suicide Etc and also just like any society where we where anybody ends up feeling like we're not sure we need you you might be a bit Surplus to requirements it's just that's that that's a society that's morally failing and that's the sense that quite a lot
of young men have now uh which is just this is uncertainty so these this would not be particularly kind of young men but I think it speaks to the issue about needed which is that the suicide rate among um men is four times higher than among women every age group but if then if you look at the specific cohort of divorced men and women it's eight times higher among divorced men than divorced women doesn't really go up among divorced women but it really goes up among divorced men and a plausible explanation for that I think
is just the sense of like well I am I needed am I connected do I have a sort of sense of responsibility and obligation am I tied in to some so to some relationships that kind of make it clear well one of the problems that divorced men have is that their ability to hold on to their social networks especially when they get married degr guys just suck at they suck at keeping their friends they do W wifeless men tend to be a bit of a mess but the when men get married they let their male
friends drop or their their uh previous single male friends drop they then absorb the wife's friend groups we're going around to such and such a person's house you kind of become friend with the husband and then you realize when you get divorced that they were there her friends all along correct yes yeah everybody was linked through the wife not through the husband so I think this conversation around needed uh like the you need to be needed yeah was something I really really wanted to get into I think [Music] um very few times maybe ever in
human history but certainly in the modern world has anybody asked the question what does it mean to be a woman in the modern world what does it mean to be a woman sort of the role is kind of in many ways for women both the uh mothering side or the career Focus side sort of I guess the two main SKS that women have in terms of Life Direction now um recent opportunities socioeconomically to be independent financially to achieve qualifications to do all of those things this is a sort of a big novel shiny new opportunity
lots of women have got that's evident like I'm kind of uh liberated I'm independent I'm doing it on my own I'm sort of chasing after these things like that's you you're kind of breaking new ground it's re revolutionary in a way it's sort of frering pioneering type stuff and then the other side which is maybe more typically where women have got their meaning from it's like as soon as you are pregnant I need to raise this creature I need I'm a mother I've got meaning it's this positive thing back and forth I'm relationally I've got
this this the I've got other mother I'm alo parenting with my sister or my aunties or whatever and you know many men even when they were uh more important to the running of the family were kind of cheerily waving from the sideline while the wife raised the kid espe you know first six months to a year any dad knows that they're kind of just like a spare part that's kind of like a a moral cheerleader who's going like well done honey would you like should I do some toast like is there anything I can do
you kind of it's the mother and the child type a little bit harder than that you know what I mean um that it's very much mother is the MVP and dad is there as the support animal that's true um yes my point being that I don't think women have had the uh what does it mean to be needed conversation now in quite the same way that men have some I'm asking the question in a very long-winded way trying to identify why you would have this sex difference given that both men and women use social media
women may be more psychologically affected women in the 15 to 34 age bracket more affected by it uh the the the only bits of sort of toxic femininity I think that really are have been uh raised up by the modern world has been this sort of relational outcasting bullying that happens online Etc um I'm trying to work out why that would be sexed and what that's what's happening to men and I get the sense that women have two very uh uh prestigious uh very uh rewarding life paths laid out in front of them right now
uh whereas men both of those the socioeconomic approach and the Homemaker approach have kind of been there are a little more Surplus to requirements in both of those Arenas now yeah super interesting in some ways you could argue that the so let's take needed I love that as this just fundamental need I have a role I have a role to play I have a role to play um and in some cases like I have a distinct role to play right as me or as a dad or as a mom and something and you take the
old version of needed was like the supply of needed to women was all we need you to raise the next gener have have the kids and raise the Next Generation and the supply of needed as to men was we're going need you to kind of raise the money get the money to raise the family and feed their kids and look after right so there were these kind of old supplies of needed and what we've done I think with women is to add another way in which they're needed right and so the message that a lot
of young women will get is like we actually the economy needs you we need you in science we need you in stem we need you to be leaders model yeah and a role model for the next generation of girls and so on without really saying by the way we also forget about the kids right because they're like no we still need you to do that by the way and of course that's a s also complaint among many but but what's what's clear is that there hasn't been this evacuation of needed for women and girls if
anything the message that they're getting is we need you more than ever because we still need you to do the old bit do it all you know to do this B um H whereas for men that old form of needed which is through the kind of economic provider model protector model has been very significantly and for good reason but it's been significantly evacuated we haven't really added anything to it and so there's been an expansion of the domains of needed for women and a contraction in the domains of needed for men for all kinds of
reasons that we could get into I think that's then playing out in terms of the different ways in which we see the Mental Health crisis playing out and especially for for men the question is then what do we need men for and do how do we help men kind of feel needed and that's a whole area around fatherhood Etc and one of the things I'm really I'm passionate about is saying like dads matter men matter um because the reason why you made this point about femininity earlier is you don't really read across history even recently
about a crisis of femininity but you read repeatedly about a crisis of masculinity and now that could be like Q IR roll right but actually what it's telling us is something incredibly important which is that the role of men has always been and always will be somewhat more socially constructed and validated because of our different role in reproduction right like at some basic visceral level and I've talked to a lot of more of a Swiss army knife whereas the the woman is a bit more of a sword or a hammer we have a few jobs
that we have you and you're well what it means is that like at some basic level I think it's embodied the I've just got it I've got it in my head you'll know this there's greater male variability right in males at the tail yes exactly there's more male Geniuses there's more males with disabilities there's more male billionaires there's more that are in jail at the same time and homeless and all the rest it this is like a social role cultural equivalent of this that there is greater male variability in the role that they're going to
take you're going to be the protector provider you're going to be the warrior you're going to be the Diplomat you're going to be across time you're going to be the person that maybe considers taking their own life you're going to you know there's more of that variability too well that's I think that the that's right the definition of mature masculinity has really shifted a lot in exactly the way that you describe it right and and so one of the one of the things I kind of point out is that actually physical competence the ability to
kind of be a good fighter well actually in many parts of human history that was incredibly important right for kind of men and it's actually just not as important anymore certainly not in my world it's been outsourced to law enforcement yeah I mean and certainly in lots of jobs now it would and like being in a Brooking seminar and really having a great right hook just doesn't really help right you Brawn based to brain based just doesn't help and so so what do we valorize instead they say well in that case you want earnings or
intelligence and then it's something else altogether but there is this term we may have talked about this before but this term cognitive self-c complexity have you come across that no you're like this and so basically what this is this idea of cognitive self- complexity is that your view of yourself has uh multiple sources so it's complex right so yourself has multip sources of meaning is basically the idea and if you look at surveys where you kind of ask women what do they get meaning from what are their sources of meaning it's much broader than for
men and so women are able to kind of draw on well the sense of meaning I get from being a mom the sense of meaning I get from being a friend the sense of meaning I get from being a a a daughter the sense of mean I get from being a professional kind of in the workplace Etc and the idea here is that actually it's like a balanced it's like having a balanced portfolio is that actually you're not putting all your eggs in one basket in terms of your identity you've had a terrible day at
work but okay it's still important to your kids as a mom you know you can be there for your friends Etc whereas with men there still putting a lot of their eggs in the basket around work and economic provision yeah they've got this sort of conceptual inertia around what they did previous a little bit and it's a bit of a lag there and so what that means for what it means number one is that if men lose their jobs it hits them much harder psychologically because that's so still very Central to their identity but it
also means they don't have quite that same ability to flex that self- complexity to just actually lean more into their role as say a friend or a father even if they're sucking at work that that weighs so heavily for them and there's a lot we could learn there I think we'll get back to talking to Richard in 1 minute but first I need to tell you about Factor if your fall schedule leaves no room for meal prep Factor has got you covered factor is fresh never frozen meals already in Just 2 minutes so all you
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