The following is from Dr Flood:
Let's look at the most recent figures on suicide in Australia. In 2003, 1,736 males committed suicide. We can break these down by age, in five year spans, from 15-19 years right through to 70-74 years. However, there is real difficulty in calculating the number of suicides related to family law disputes, as we have no information at this aggregate level on the motivations or contexts for suicides. We don't even know whether individuals who kill themselves are married, or separated / divorced, or have children.
Still, we can use the data and some educated guesses to start producing at least some vague figures.
Let's assume that suicides related to family law and child custody occur among men who are married and/or have children aged under 18. So, if we focus only on men aged at least 20 and no more than say 59, the total number of male suicides for this age range in 2003 was 1,344.
What's much harder to assess or guess is how many of the suicides among men aged 20 - 59 were related to family law disputes. Is it 5 per cent? 20 per cent? 50 per cent? 100 per cent? I am guessing that the proportion would be towards the lower end of these figures.
There are several obvious reasons why the proportion cannot be 100 per cent;
(a) High rates of suicide have been documented among male populations with no relation to family law. It is well documented for example that young gay men (in the context of homophobia and self-hatred) kill themselves at much higher rates than other males, so some proportion of these suicides will be accounted for by this.
(b) Only some proportion of the men aged 20 to 59 will be married, separated, or divorced and going through some kind of family law dispute.
(c) A wide range of other contexts and motivations shape men's suicide, including mental illness.
Nevertheless, let's produce numbers for each proportion.
If five per cent of all 1,344 suicides in 2003 among men aged 20 - 59 were related to family law disputes, then this is 67 suicides (or one suicide about every 5 days).
If twenty per cent... 269 suicides (or one suicide every 1.4 days).
If 50 per cent.... 672 suicides (or close to two suicides every day).
If 100 percent... 1,344 suicides (or close to four suicides every day).
These calculations produce a (very problematic and inaccurate) estimate of the number of male suicides associated with family law disputes. However, there is a final complication. These figures are not equivalent to a figure for "the number of men pushed to kill themselves by the Family Court" or similar. The motivations of men who kill themselves in the context of family law disputes may vary, and some may have little to do with the involvement of the Family Court, perceived injustice, involuntary loss of contact with one's children, and so on. They may be expressions of grief or loss to do with the loss of the relationship, symptoms of mental illness, or have other causes.
In short, the claim that "five men a day kill themselves because of the Family Court" proves to be a gross exaggeration.
ABS (2003) Suicide: Recent Trends, Australia, 1993-2002. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics (Cat. No. 3309.0.55.001)
Dr Flood has done extensive research on the father'/men's rights