🧠 Mental Health

⬅️ Hub: Boy Crisis MOC

Mental health and psychology of struggling boys and men.

Mental Health

• Social Withdrawal: One in seven UK young men are NEET, opting out of society, often retreating to porn, gaming, or extremist online communities (e.g., Andrew Tate’s influence).
• Traditional Role of Provider: The book emphasizes that men are often culturally and economically pressured into prioritizing their role as financial providers over being actively involved in raising their children. This stems from historical and societal expectations where men’s primary value was seen as their ability to earn money, support the family financially, and protect them.
• Behavioral Issues: Increased risks of delinquency, substance abuse, and criminal behavior are linked to father absence.
• Social Bribes: Farrell talks about “social bribes” where men are rewarded with status or respect for sacrificing their well-being or time with family for work or societal roles, reinforcing the cycle of provider over parent.
• Reeves reflects on how mental health services are often coded as feminine, both in branding and practice. This unintentionally alienates many men, contributing to their reluctance to seek therapy.
• A “therapeutic gender gap” persists: men are less likely to pursue mental health treatment even though they’re at higher risk of suicide. Reeves notes how even websites for suicide prevention often appear feminine in tone and design, potentially deterring male engagement​

1. Purpose Void
   1. ikigai
      1. Less likely to die of heart disease. Kozo Tanno et al., “Associations of Ikigai as a Positive Psychological Factor with All-Cause Mortality and Cause-Specific Mortality Among Middle-Aged and Elderly Japanese People,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 67, no. 1 (2009): 67–7, doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2008.10.018.
   2. Fathers help sons find their purpose
   3. He’ll hear phrases like “male power” and “male privilege,” and while he may get that when he looks at all the presidents and CEOs, your son may simultaneously Ieel that the male role is pressuring him to Ieel obligated to earn money someone else spends while he dies sooner. That may feel to him like neither power nor privilege. Here is some of what he may be absorbing that can contribute to his purpose void, for which he will need your help to create constructive alternatives …
   4. In essence, the Japanese boys’ unconscious wisdom is: their dad as winner is really their dad as loser. He “wins” the game of life—gaining money and power—by losing in the reality of life. And often losing his life. To what end? Japanese boys become clear, too, that marriage is not about intimacy as they hear common Japanese sayings such as “a good husband is healthy but absent.” McCargo, Contemporary Japan, 80.
   5. When our sons worldwide see senses of purpose that end in suicide, or pathways to a sense of purpose disappearing and creating a “purpose void,” their unconscious wisdom tells them there must be something more than climbing a ladder to nowhere.
   6. Then and now, the good news is that fewer boys define their purpose as a man as becoming heroes in war or at work—and risking their health and lives to do so. The bad news is that no one is filling boys’ purpose void with viable alternatives.
   7. The women’s movement warned every girl how marriage can seduce her to make a sacrifice of her career. But no one warned every boy how marriage can seduce him to make a sacrifice in his career.
   8. Lack of Motivation
      1. Gaming
      2. Seclusion
      3. Porn addiction
2. Hero Paradox
   1. Value YourselI by Not Valuing Yourself
   2. The message? The more survival is at stake, the more boys are valued to risk death so others might live.
   3. Social Bribes
      1. Females
         1. The roots of female social bribes for males to risk their lives to receive female love run as deep as the roots of warfare. It is part of our genetic heritage.
      2. Dad
      3. Mom, Men, the Media, the Military
      4. The catch-22 of your son as hero is that the more he becomes a hero as killer, the less likely he is to become a hero as husband. As we’ll see in the chapter on heroic intelligence versus health intelligence, many of the qualities your son develops to kill in war—or be a hero at work undermine the qualities it takes to love at home. In brief, what he does to be loved often divorces him from love.
      5. WWI: White feathers given to men that didn’t serve. Done publicly. (Coward)
      6. Brotherhood
      7. All societies have prepared their boys to be dispensable
3. Patriarchy Propaganda
   1. Causes men to be ignored
   2. Male Privilege
   

Psychology

• The Need for the Centre for Male Psychology
  • Created to fill a public-facing gap in research and advocacy for male psychology.
  • Surprisingly, the general public shows more awareness of male mental health issues than professional psychology does.
• Blind Spots in Psychology
  • Psychology often ignores men as a subject of study
  • The field tends to blame men for their own suffering (e.g., if they don’t seek therapy, it’s their fault).
  • There’s little curriculum attention on male psychology—only one university in the world (Sunderland) offers a module on it.
• Therapy Models Are Female-Oriented
  • Therapeutic models are better suited for women (talk-based emotional processing).
  • Men often seek problem-solving, not emotional venting, yet this is overlooked
• Biases in Psychology
  • Alpha Bias: Exaggerates differences between sexes (old model).
  • Beta Bias: Ignores or minimizes those differences (current mainstream model).
  • Gamma Bias: Gender is emphasized when women do good, ignored when men do; reversed for bad behavior (e.g., “violent man” vs. “woman commits act”).
• Therapy Barriers for Men
  • Men are less likely to trust therapists or open up, especially when their issues (e.g., being victims of domestic violence) are met with disbelief or blame.
  • Psychology has failed to build therapeutic environments that meet men where they are.