As linked in the article:
The escalating suicide rate is a profound indictment of the country’s mental health system. Most people who kill themselves have identifiable psychiatric symptoms, even if they never get an official diagnosis.And there is this salient observation:
The rise in suicide rates has coincided over the past two decades with a vast increase in the number of Americans given a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, and treated with medication.
The number of people taking an open-ended prescription for an antidepressant is at a historic high. More than 15 million Americans have been on the drugs for more than five years, a rate that has more than tripled since 2000.
But if treatment is so helpful, why hasn’t its expansion halted or reversed suicide trends?
When it comes to America, we must notice, as I have often said, that far too much American therapy is of the touchy feely variety. Patients are induced to get in touch with their feelings and to feel their feelings. Beyond the fact that this approach doubles down on the social disconnection these patients feel, there is very little chance that the average middle-aged male, belonging to a high risk population, is going to consult with a therapist who is going to mother him or is going to tell him to get in touch with his feminine side.
One can question how effective this approach is for women. Most likely, not very. The more therapy becomes a woman’s profession, the more people seem disinclined to consult. Or disinclined to take it seriously. If therapy is just offering professional mothering, why would anyone undergo the process? If therapists can do nothing more than to send you scurrying into your soul to dredge up repressed feelings, why bother? If therapists’ go-to solution is to drown every problem in empathy… what’s the point?
For people who are suicidal, the prospect of receiving empathy from a female therapist is not going to be too appealing. It's going to feel offensive. Especially for men, but likely also for women.