Masculinity and emotions
Norms of masculinity around stoicism, self-reliance, and strength can lead to the suppression of emotions and exacerbate mental health issues like depression or anxiety. To cope with these issues, men may turn to mechanisms like binge-drinking and substance use rather than opening up and admitting vulnerability.
Mental health care and self-stigma
Masculine norms also sit uneasily with the need to seek help when experiencing mental ill-health. Men may struggle to seek help as they have to overcome internalised stigma around mental health care. Moreover, common treatments for mental ill-health often require levels of introspection and a willingness to be open and vulnerable that clash with these norms. Combined, this can have the effect of leading to poor health-seeking behaviour, attrition from treatment, or an insufficient opening up and engagement with treatment pathways and methods.
Men’s suicidality
This unwillingness to discuss poor mental health and seek help has been used as an explanation for higher suicide rates among men. For example, one study in Australia sought to answer why there is a ‘gender paradox’ when it comes to suicide, where more men die by suicide than women, even though more women report suicidal ideation to healthcare professionals (Griffin et al. 2022). They argue that masculine norms around self-reliance make men less likely to seek help for depression and other forms of mental ill-health, hence the under-diagnosing of men with mental ill-health that could lead to suicide.
Addressing men’s mental ill-health through tailored care
Seidler et al. (2018) note various ways of counteracting this: tailoring treatment to make it more person-centred; understanding that some aspects of hegemonic masculine ideals can have positive expressions as well as negative ones (e.g., risk-taking and independence); and understanding that ideals of masculinity can be disrupted and are subject to change and that clinicians should help men understand that they are not necessarily core or innate traits but that they can be shifted.