When Soldiering on Alone Isn’t the Best Option

Guys don’t want to admit when they have a problem. Never have. The issue of the stubborn male typically elicits an eye rolling, boys will be boys response, but when it comes to mental health we need to be careful we’re not ignoring an emergency. Internalizing disorders (specifically anxiety and depression) are historically attributed to women, despite evidence that clearly shows it’s a serious threat to men’s well-being as well.

When it comes to men’s health, there’s a fine line between an occasional pissy mood and a critical decline in psychological well-being. Men’s mental illness is too often underestimated and I’m convinced that needs to change.

Why isolate men?

According to this study, there are four explanations for gender differences in mental health: socialization, help-seeking, coping, and gender stratification. This research suggests that men require a separate approach to managing their stress because, even though they are biologically similar to women, men have evolved with a completely separate way of handling their problems.

For example, men and women are traditionally socialized to act, think, and show emotion differently based on gender. The weight of masculinity encourages boys and men to be assertive, competitive, and independent. The stressful nature of male breadwinner expectations, however, or the weakness associated with not being able to fulfill this role, negatively affects men’s health. And how could it not? Men are also expected to hide any emotion that might be defined as “un-manly” or worse, weak. This leads to poor communication, as men tend to hide their psychological problems, too often reluctant to even report symptoms.

Don’t get me wrong, a reliance on self-management strategies is effective in many situations, like navigating the truck when you’re lost. The snag in this plan is when self-reliance becomes your only coping mechanism for dealing with something as challenging as mental illness, which almost always necessitates external direction to find a solution.

Hell, even the term “mental health” is associated with weakness. In one report, psychologist Patrick Corrigan noted, “The prejudice and discrimination of mental illness is as disabling as the illness itself. It undermines people attaining their personal goals and dissuades them from pursuing effective treatments.”

No wonder it’s so hard to diagnose depression and anxiety in men.

You might be asking, when exactly is the right time for a guy to seek advice to improve their mental game? The quick answer is yesterday, but men in the US aren’t exactly following that strategy. Instead, it’s closer to the opposite, where psychological problems are relegated to the bottom of the to-do list. Call it manliness or whatever, but it’s clearly not working. If today’s stressors aren’t going anywhere, there needs to be a better way to handle pressure at work and home, and I’m convinced that begins with a conversation.

But maybe you’re in luck and your psyche hasn’t become a daily battle yet. In either case, managing your mental health needs to happen before it intensifies and regular unhappiness becomes the least of your worries. After all, the upside to treatment (improvements at work, parenting, and relationships to name a few) makes for a solid ROI.

The facts

Although men’s mental health has received more coverage in recent years, it’s still rarely talked about, rarely detected, and worse of all, rarely treated before it becomes an urgent situation.

Mental health disorders are even referred to as a “silent crisis” for men in the US, too often masked by self-medicating or ending in suicide. Men are significantly less likely to use mental health services compared with women, and far less likely to bring it up in their social network. Men are even less likely to have symptoms that fit standard measurement tools or clinical diagnoses. Male suicides outnumber women 4:1, which is now the 7th leading cause of death among males in the US.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 19% of the population every year, and yet, less than 40% of those suffering receive treatment. Then there are the 6 million American men with depression–a number that’s only conceivable when you relate it to the population of Maryland. (I’ve been to a game at the Staples center, go Lakers, and know what a crowd of 21,000 people looks like, but this figure is still 285x that amount.)

It’s interesting though how often percentages of mental illness lean more toward females and therefore take the attention away from men. This does not, however, mean that men aren’t suffering too. Maybe our skewed statistics are the result of men tending to downplay their symptoms, for example, reporting fatigue and loss of interest, rather than sadness and worthlessness. I wonder how often a guy is misdiagnosed because “he’s not depressed, he’s just overworked.”

To clarify, even though women are statistically more likely to experience depression, significant numbers of men do as well. Less than women, maybe, but we’re still talking about millions of guys here. These massive numbers suggest that many men are suffering. It suggests that maybe it’s actually normal for men to need a hand when life is running rough.

Which men, where?

I was surprised to see that mental illness often affects blue-collar guys in rural America — men who make a living farming, logging, and fishing. Guys who, with one glance, we’d consider hale and hearty, who aren’t afraid of physically demanding labor and long hours spent working toward a distant objective.

Then there are guys like the greatest Olympian of all time (Michael Phelps) and most recently, Anthony Bourdain who appear, at least from the TV, to be living the dream. Mental illness is challenging professional male athletes from the NBA, to professional surfing, to the hunting world.

After reading all of these personal accounts I noticed a few common themes: mental illness can affect any man, and the healing process typically begins with a conversation.

So what do we do?

The Movember Foundation, the guys who use your mustache in November to advocate for men’s health, say it’s beyond time for awareness. And I agree. The next step to improve men’s mental fitness is to talk, ask, listen, encourage action, and check in with yourself and the men in your life.