Men 'suffering recession blues'
Men responding to the survey seemed to be more reluctant to talk about when they were feeling stressed or low than women.
Only 29% of men would talk to friends about their problems compared with 53% of women and they were also less likely to talk to their family.
Men were also less likely to seek out professional help and a third would feel embarrassed about it.
And 5% of men said they had experienced suicidal thoughts compared with 2% of women.
...
Paul Farmer, chief executive at Mind, said: "The recession is clearly having a detrimental impact on the nation's mental health, but men in particular are struggling with the emotional impact.
"Being a breadwinner is something that is still crucial to the male psyche so if a man loses his job he loses a large part of his identity putting his mental wellbeing in jeopardy.
"The problem is that too many men wrongly believe that admitting mental distress makes them weak and this kind of self stigma can cost lives."
I'm not sure 'psyche' is the right word here, but essentially, social understandings of masculinity are damaging men's health. This overlaps directly with the understanding of masculinity that is at the root of such problems as domestic violence and sexual assault (obviously, individuals are responsible for their own actions, but this is the construct that has made such actions more easily dismissed as a 'private' matter, or overlooked as harmless, because he's 'only a man, he can't help it'). Creating a society in which masculinity is less rigidly defined, in which more channels of communication are open and more men feel comfortable using them, makes things better for everybody.
