Older white men more likely to commit suicide.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

In the U.S., older men of European descent (so-called white men) have significantly higher suicide rates than any other demographic group, even though they have fewer burdens associated with aging. For example, they are less likely to experience widowhood and have better physical health and fewer disabilities than older women. They have more economic resources than ethnic minority older men, and than older women across ethnicities. Still, their suicide rates are well above older men of African, Latino, or indigenous descent, as well as relative to older women across ethnicities.

Behind these facts there is a cultural story, not just individual journeys of psychological pain and despair, maintains Silvia Sara Canetto, professor in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, who suggests that older white men may be less psychologically equipped to deal with the normal challenges of aging, likely because of their privilege up until late adulthood.

An important factor in white men's psychological brittleness and vulnerability to suicide once they reach late life, Canetto asserts, may be dominant scripts of masculinity, aging, and suicide. Particularly pernicious for this group may...