FYI, our correspondence:

MMA
MINISTRY OF MEN’S AFFAIRS
MINITATANGA MO NGA TANE
A Community Group because successive governments have failed to respect the voice and welfare of New Zealand men

PO Box 13130
Tauranga 3141
[email protected]
Phone (07)5712435 or (0274)799745

6 October 2015

Ms Moira Clunie
Director of Programme Design and Delivery
Mental Health Foundation
PO Box 10051
Dominion Road
Auckland 1446
Sent also via web page contact

Dear Ms Clunie

Re: Mental Health Foundation release regarding increased suicide numbers, and your interview on Radio NZ’s Checkpoint on 6/10/2015

While we acknowledge the Mental Health Foundation’s efforts to be helpful in its public statements about suicide in light of this year’s significant increase in deaths from suicide to the highest rate since annual coronial figures were kept, we have a number of questions as follows.

1. Why does your web-site article on this year’s suicide rate completely fail to mention the extent to which it is a gender issue, and why does it not mention the word “men’ at all except as a racial issue?

2. Why does your web-site reporting on this year’s suicide rate fail to mention that the 7% increase was entirely contributed by additional male deaths that increased by 11% while female deaths actually reduced by 6%?

3. Why does your web-site article state “The statistics tell us there needs to be greater attention to meeting the needs of young people and Maori men in particular” when in fact the gender difference for suicides is several times greater than any difference between age or racial groups however those are divided and compared?

4. Why in your Radio NZ interview did you carefully avoid mentioning men until the interviewer asked you one question about the hugely disproportionate male rate, and even then you sought to obfuscate the degree to which suicide is a male issue by emphasizing the racial difference and implying that it is as significant and important as the gender difference?

5. Can you demonstrate the mathematics that led you to claim that an 11% increase in male suicides was not statistically significant?

6. Why do the Mental Health Foundation’s suggestions for how to reduce suicide fail to mention any male-specific suggestions?

7. Why does the Mental Health Foundation fail to mention the likelihood that the way men are treated in our society (not to mention many other developed countries) is a reason that men feel so worthless and hopeless as to kill themselves in such appallingly high numbers?

8. Why does the Mental Health Foundation fail to mention that suicide might be reduced by discontinuing some or all of the many forms of bad treatment of males, such as:
“¢ widespread demonization of men and maleness in the absence of much appreciation or respect;
“¢ failure of our education system to provide equally for males’ learning needs and results while at the same time suspending and expelling males in heavily disproportionate numbers;
“¢ men being disallowed exclusive male clubs and services while women’s gender-specific organizations abound;
“¢ reported victimization statistics that frequently mention only female and child numbers and completely fail to mention the male rates or the fact that men are ever victims at all;
“¢ men’s contribution of almost 100% of workplace deaths and the vast majority of workplace serious injuries year after year in return for which they hear only constant complaints that women are claimed to earn about 12% less across the much safer jobs they mainly do;
“¢ men’s much higher likelihood of being killed or maimed in military service, and men being seen generally as disposable;
“¢ men’s much harsher treatment by law-enforcement agencies and in the justice system’s prosecution and sentencing;
“¢ the fact that a number of gender-specific laws only discriminate against males and there are none in the opposite direction, and the fact that many other laws although not gender-specific were designed to discriminate against men and operate as such;
“¢ ongoing heavy discrimination against men in contested Family Court cases including care of children and so-called “protection orders’;
“¢ emotional devastation of men who are much more often abandoned as inadequate by their partners and who then frequently lose their bonded relationships, roles and/or meaningful contact with their children;
“¢ exploitation of men through disproportionate, legalized theft of their previously earned assets deemed to become “relationship property’;
“¢ financial enslavement and impoverishment of men through excessive so-called “child support’ that is not recognized and appreciated by children as coming from their fathers and therefore does not contribute to father-child bonding, and is extracted from men even when their relationships with their children are denied or disrupted;
“¢ a more general devaluing and/or usurping of men’s roles by the state leading to high rates of family break-up;
and so forth.

9. In view of the Mental Health Foundation’s refusal to acknowledge the extent to which suicide is a gender issue, why does the Foundation’s web-site material emphasize the gender aspect of domestic violence of which the more serious is similar to suicide in its gender unbalance but in the opposite gender direction?

We look forward to hearing answers to these questions and understanding better the Mental Health Foundation’s agenda.

Yours sincerely etc