Join the Call: It’s Time for a Dedicated Male Suicide Prevention Action Plan
The Australian Men’s Health Forum has renewed its calls for Government to form a plan to tackle male suicide as the National Suicide Prevention Conference gets underway in Perth today.
The Time to Act on Male Suicide campaign was launched in 2023 alongside a report on the incidence of male suicide in Australia. It has been updated in 2025 and shows the figures on male suicide have worsened.
The Facts
- Suicide in Australia kills 7 men a day.
- It is the leading killer of men under 65.
- The number of Australian men who die by suicide has risen by more than 25% in the past decade, from nearly 1900 deaths in 2013 to more than 2,400 male suicides in 2023.
- 3,214 Australians died by suicide in 2023 (2,419 males and 795 females).
- Suicide kills three times more men than women in Australia.
AMHF’s petition calls on the Albanese Government to target support and funding toward men at risk by launching a Male Suicide Prevention Action Plan for Australia.
Time to Act on Male Suicide (2025 edition) supports the view of Suicide Prevention Australia, who says: "Male suicide is an issue requiring targeted policy and funding attention by all governments."
In 2020, the PM's National Suicide Advisor said: "The disproportionate impact of suicide on males must be called out as a priority for whole-of-government attention."
The advice to Federal, State and Territory Governments was clean and unequivocal:
"All jurisdictions [should] commit to priority actions for male suicide prevention to be incorporated into the National Suicide Prevention Strategy."
The new National Suicide Prevention Strategy was published in 2025. Just 3 of the 117 actions specifically mention men or men's services.
Included in the updated Time To Act of Male Suicide Report is poster – that can be downloaded – on the Social Determinants of Male Suicide.
“What are the social and economic inequities that drive Australian men to take their lives three times more often than women?” asks the report’s author, AMHF CEO Glen Poole.
“How can the Strategy help address the inequities and disparities that drive male suicide if it doesn’t first identify what those issues are? This failure to identify and wrestle the health and social inequalities is common practice across all areas of social policy and practice.”
Social determinants of male suicide include:
- Childhood trauma: 70% of suicides linked to childhood maltreatment are male.
- Fatherhood: Being a single or separated father can double the risk of suicide and suicidality.
- Work: Men in male-dominated jobs have 3 x higher suicide rates than men in gender-neutral jobs. Unemployment is a key factor in male suicide.
- Substance abuse: More than 80% of suicides linked to alcohol or drug use are male.
- Boys’ education: Suicide risk in men with no post-school qualifications is 2.6 x higher than male graduates and nearly 6 x higher than female graduates.
- Priority populations: The high risk of male suicide is elevated in priority groups, for example, Indigenous males, men and boys with disabilities and Rural and Remote males.
AMHF is repeating its call for the development of a Male Suicide Prevention Action Plan to identify how the actions in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy can be directed towards specifically tackling male suicide.
AMHF asks how wider Government policy can help address disparities and inequities in social and economic circumstances that are driving the high rates of male suicide. “The National Suicide Prevention Strategy has not been designed to work for the men at risk of suicide,” it concludes.
DOWNLOAD
Time To Act on Male Suicide 2025 (Report)
The Social Determinants of Male Suicide (2025, Poster)
Male Suicide in Australia (2025, Fact Sheet)
National Suicide Prevention Conference
The 26th annual National Suicide Prevention Conference runs from May 20-22 at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre. This year's theme is Together Towards Tomorrow.