Assistant Professor of Sociology Valerie Callanan's research is providing insight into differences in suicide methods used by women and men, showing that there are marked gender differences in the use of suicide methods that disfigure the face or head.
The research, published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles was conducted by Callanan and Mark Davis of the Criminal Justice Research Center at The Ohio State University between 1997 and 2006. According to the authors, "What we do know is that those experiencing stressful life events are at far greater risk of employing an especially lethal method of suicide than those not experiencing such events."