Middle-aged academics are at greater suicide risk than students

Once again, Andrew Oswald has got to the heart of the problem. Academic life is so competitive that for most there will be a constant struggle against feeling a failure even if one's career path is excellent. One of many causes is the need to progress to higher grades because the salary has fallen behind inflation. Thus, as staff members start families and buy houses they need a larger income. There is also an obsession with youth to a greater degree than previously. One of my ex-colleagues moved from an office near me to a chair at 37 whereas I entered my current department as a lecturer at that age. A top academic career in a high-ranking university is no-longer one in which you can make any mistakes, have any experience of another career or have anything unfortunate happen to you in life. Since we cannot control everything, there will be unforeseen events and these will potentially cause stress. However, one should never forget that at its heart, the academic life is still one with more freedom than most and one should seek help rather than committing suicide since from that there is no comeback.

PS. On a lighter note, I am pleased to see that I have passed the age of highest risk and so in a few years should get to draw my reduced USS pension! :)

Hmmm. Andrew Oswald is quite correct to point to this general reality: in the UK, the statistically average 47-year-old man is FIVE TIMES AS LIKELY to commit suicide (24.8 per 100,000) as the average 18-year-old woman (4.7 per 100,000). But we do need to be careful, not least because these statistics often paint quite contrasting figures and can be interpreted in widely (even wildly) different ways; but also because no-one is average and the devil often lies in the detail. As the Office of National Statistics recently showed, the rate of HE student deaths by suicide (even for the spike of 2017, which at 95 deaths means 4.7 student suicides in HE per 100,000) is actually LOWER than the national average for their age cohort (which stands around 6 per 100,000). At the same time, while there are presently no dedicated statistics for 'university lecturers', these come under the ‘science, research and engineering’ (professional) category, in which suicide rates for men are only 50% of the general national average, and for women are 85% of the general national average. In this regard, university lecturers seem to buck the general trend (that is, that men commit suicide SIGNIFICANTLY more than women), but are in line with the overall pattern that higher levels of education (especially when used as part of work) give for significantly lower suicide rates. That said, even within single professions, one of the other major variables seems to be people's control over their work environment: all other things being equal, senior managers, skilled professionals in charge of their own work, etc. tend to have lower suicide rates, whereas their subordinates have higher rates. Other indicators, such as loss of control over domestic life through divorce, widowhood and loss of property, point in the same direction. I guess then that the prima facie takeaway message here seems to be that university life is generally protective for both academic staff and students in terms of suicide rates, but much depends on the degree to which people's lives and work are within their own control.

Neoliberal management of Universities includes extreme violence and permits narcissists and other psychopaths good for nothing except to kiss backsides to climb the so-called stairs of power. I worked in a British satellite university for 15 years and I witnessed all of that...plus rewards for the bullies by the UK campus. I saw racism, Islamophobia, and corruption to the highest levels... the death of students on campus kept secret, no union, just like a Nike factory...At the end, talented scientists are eliminated...but we can't afford that anymore with ecological collapse and COVID...Neoliberal management of universities is facism and British Universities are now humbug and toxic businesses. In Malaysia, some so-called prestigious British universities are running slavery houses...

For every suicide there are many who live with depression, feelings of being total failures, other pyscho-physical illnesses directly work related. Bullies are rewarded as long as they are able to achieve any marginal improvement in rankings however soft termist it might be. Racists have become more subtle and clever in their ways. Selective discrimination seems to be the new trend.