(Illustration by iStock/Kubkoo)
All over the globe, stigma and entrenched gender norms continue to prevent many men from seeking mental health support. Toxic masculinity tells men that they are not men unless they keep their struggles inside—with anger or stoicism the only acceptable responses to difficulty. This socialization also limits men’s ability to acknowledge and express their emotional world, which can result in coping behaviors like substance use that negatively impact themselves and others, including and especially intimate partners. These behaviors are then normalized in many societies, perpetuating harmful cultures that affect all genders and contribute to negative outcomes, like poorer physical health and social relationships, for men and those close to them.
Despite the well-established benefits of mental health resources and interventions, men in the US, for example, are half as likely to receive mental health services as women. Research has shown that, generally, men view reaching out for mental health services as weak and “unmanly” and have concerns about how seeking help will be perceived by others. This has devastating impacts as men in the US and around the world are more likely to die by suicide than women. While this difference is driven by many factors, it points to a cultural failure to be responsive to the needs of half of the population. Men’s reluctance to engage in mental health conversations also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it likely contributes to the fact that women make up the overwhelming majority of mental health providers, further diminishing men’s willingness to engage with services. Other intersections, like race, LGBTQ identity, and socioeconomic status, further exacerbate problems with affordability, accessibility, and representation.
The thing is, conversations about help-seeking in men’s mental health are not unique to men or mental health. Across all social impact areas, initiatives often fail to fully engage community members, even when they would likely benefit from offered services and resources. By examining some of the ways global mental health organizations have made progress in starting conversations and providing effective and responsive resources for men, social impact leaders can better engage community members, particularly those who have been historically excluded or face additional cultural barriers to success.
Elevate Impacted Individuals as Leaders in Vulnerable Conversations
Mental health education is essential, as many people do not have the tools to identify challenges like depression or know where to seek help. However, simply providing information about mental health is insufficient. Storytelling and narrative are often vital to give people understanding and insight into what the statistics and knowledge that they receive look like in the real world. Critical to this is our ability to see ourselves and our experiences in shared stories.
In men’s mental health, this means elevating how this topic may affect men differently. For example, telling a man to ask for help without acknowledging how many others have been rejected or shamed for showing vulnerability is likely to resonate less than hearing another man share how their seeking help has intersected with his own sense of identity. While initiatives to reduce stigma for men often highlight role models traditionally associated with masculinity, like professional athletes, highlighting the stories of relatable people makes an impact and is even preferred by some.
As opposed to simply telling people that support or resources are effective and available, community members can be trusted partners in storytelling to model vulnerability, demonstrate the impact of resources, and allow individuals to see themselves in the stories of others. Highlighting individual stories is standard practice in social change work, albeit often for fundraising purposes. For community engagement, sharing the stories and leadership of individuals traditionally excluded from similar initiatives is often left out, contributing to a cycle of not engaging with resources that feel irrelevant to their experiences. While avoiding tokenistic behaviors that use voices to draw attention to their specific work, social impact leaders can partner with local advocates and provide resources, including support, training, and payment, that empower people to share their stories in ways that inspire others. Additionally, they can partner with local organizations, including nonprofits, government, or schools, or create media campaigns, including local news and social media, to share and amplify through shared and trusted community spaces.
One great example of this is the Speak Up Campaign led by BasicNeeds Kenya, a nonprofit that has been working on mental health in the country for more than 15 years. This campaign works with local champions and prioritizes outreach to men to empower them as advocates and to center their mental health stories, including the impact of reaching out for support. The organization created high-quality YouTube videos to share on social media and collaborated with local news to share their stories. The social marketing campaign was rigorously evaluated, and a significant positive change in relation to stigma was found.
Whomever the target audience is, changemakers should prioritize lifting up the stories, perspectives, and leadership of those often excluded from outreach and leadership to demonstrate that people belong and shift the views of community members outside the target audience.
Empower Trusted Community Members to Provide Support and Resources
In addition to elevating stories to inspire and disrupt social norms, community members should be leaders and partners in providing resources. In global mental health, there is a significant evidence base that community members can be as effective as clinicians in providing some forms of mental health support. Community representation means that individuals reaching out for help can identify with those providing resources, building trust and resources more responsive to their needs and experiences. Given the underrepresentation of men in the mental health workforce, the amount of higher education needed to become a mental health clinician, and growing mental health distress, interventions that train community members, as opposed to relying on clinical mental health services, can also more quickly meet the needs of many experiencing problems like depression and anxiety. To meet the needs of those often excluded from resources, this means intentionally partnering with and conducting outreach to impacted community members as providers instead of just consumers of resources.
Amna, an organization providing community healing support to refugees, recruits and hires facilitators with lived experience to lead psychosocial interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing. Amna’s Dinami program for young people includes Dinami Friend, a youth club for boys, and Football4all, a monthly event that incorporates sports and psychosocial healing activities. By focusing on training and hiring facilitators whose identity and experience reflect the specific experiences of those in the program, they can reach and engage more boys and attract more boys and men to lead the programs as they see themselves in support roles. Other social impact leaders can integrate similar principles by hiring and elevating impacted community members as leaders in outreach and services and broader leadership positions.
Go Where People Spend Their Time
Instead of requiring people to seek out information on their own time, organizations can meet people where they are and on their terms. For example, integrating mental health resources into other health care resources is essential, but men are often less likely to reach out to these resources as well. Further, even if men provide community stories and resources, if they are not offered in a way that effectively reaches their target audience, the impact of the resources will be limited.
To start conversations where many men spend their time, the Friendship Bench, a mental health intervention for depression started in Zimbabwe, partnered with the World Health Organization and FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. As part of FIFA’s #ReachOut campaign that encourages help-seeking and actions for mental health, 32 symbolic Friendship Benches representing competing countries were placed in stadiums and community spaces. The benches were elevated by leaders in government, sports, and NGOs in the media and used locally to create spaces where people can share and connect with others, particularly in the male-dominated sports community that has historically had higher mental health stigma rates than other spaces. Since then, the WHO and FIFA have renewed this partnership and will continue running several campaigns aimed at increasing mental wellbeing through sport, such as the #ReachOut campaign, for the next four years.
In addition to using public forums for dialogue and awareness, organizations with limited engagement can adapt based on community conversations to become more aligned with how people want to use resources. For example, Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) offers free counseling calls via WhatsApp to provide effective support and eliminate cost barriers. While there was high engagement with the resource, MANI realized that about 85 percent of the calls were from women. Determined to reach more men, their team conducted community research and found that men preferred text-based counseling services to express themselves and receive support. After launching this feature, there was a 40 percent increase in men reaching out for help.
Conclusion
Across all social impact areas, leaders often fail to reach and engage those who would significantly benefit from resources, particularly those historically excluded in their focus areas. By elevating community stories, empowering community leaders as providers, and prioritizing the preferences of community members, social impact leaders can respond to people's needs, increase engagement, and build capacity and pathways for impacted individuals to transform resources and their communities.
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Read more stories by Kelly Davis, Rukudzo Mwamuka, Erla Magnúsdóttir & Gabriella Brent.