To the Editor:
Re “Fear of Failing” (Education Life section, Aug. 2):
The vast majority of students who commit suicide are male. And yet every single one of your “case studies” was female. Not once did you indicate that males are more prone to succeed in committing suicide than females or that 80 percent of all suicides between the ages of 14 and 28 are males. Why the focus on women to the exclusion of men in such an article?
I see this all the time in articles that deal with health issues (including mental health). Male students also struggle with social and familial expectations of perfection; they also struggle with pressure to measure up. And more of them commit suicide than women. In the future, I hope that you will be gender-fair and inclusive.
ROGER E. OLSON
Waco, Tex.
The writer is a professor of Christian theology and ethics at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University.
