A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world. I personally know at least a dozen men who have been harassed by biased laws and judges when it comes to divorce. These are good men, who worked really hard and took care of their wives very well, only to get either cheated on or scammed for money and lost everything. 2 of them are even almost homeless now. Most of them have aged so poorly after just 2 years into the divorce. Their wives aren't even homemakers who sacrificed anything who are getting paid, mostly working women who have good lawyers who just abuse the laws to steal wealth. Until this system is fixed, men's mental health will always be down the toilet.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
You don't even have to sign a contract to end up in this situation. In California at least, just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married. That needs to be fixed. Marriage should absolutely be a contractual agreement where one party is fully aware what they're giving up, signing over, or potentially losing, not something you end up in through no fault of your own.
this "just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married" is completely false and a myth. Especially in California.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
Brazilian law is far superior to US laws on this matter.
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
Gosh, this thread is so full of sweeping takes. Different or equal in what regard? Income? Violent behavior? Or culinary skills? Maybe we should not codify stereotypes into law...
Equality and justice are certainly noble goals. but they are at this point merely goals. But in parallel, we very much need better support for the men going through the challenges that may come from the lack of equality in divorce proceedings.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
I started reading this thinking I would disagree, but you're right, in some countries (Canada for sure), there's a weird thing that some genders are more equal than others. I know this sounds bad, but I am a left-leaning feminist.
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
I agree that divorce proceedings could be more equal than they are. But society is not gender neutral, so things like divorce proceedings aren't either. Women are far, far more likely to be stay at home parents. That means they're far more involved in childcare and far less likely to be earning money independently. That makes the situation very difficult when it comes to divorce.
There is the underlying reality and bias. When I'd pick up my kid from Kindergarten it was me and 20-30 other moms hanging out on the playground afterwards. So yes, in that sense we may not see gender neutral outcomes.
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
Cool. You think that explains the findings in TFA related to adolescent boys?
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%
the percentage who experienced:
mood disorders increased from11% to 16%
generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
He's saying: They are aware of problems adults face.
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold.
My comment is about grown men going through grief because of biased laws. What is the relation to "TFA related to adolescent boys"?
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
> Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
Pro-tip (for both unmarried men and women): You can sign a pre-nup even if you never have any nuptials. It turns out that people can choose to enter into a contract with each other at any time. There are plenty of reasons why people in a relationship may choose not to get legally married, but that does not mean you have to leave yourself at the mercy of the defaults in the law, which may or may not make sense for you.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
"Sharia" is the Arabic word for "law", so "Sharia law" just means "law law", or at least "law in places that speak Arabic" which is at least a bit more specific.
Sharia law actually has some good ideas in it. I think we should investigate Islamic banking and see if any of it would improve our economies. Because charging interest is forbidden in Islam, many of them do mortgages as a rent to own system instead, which leaves the bank on the hook if the house value crashes, instead of the buyer, so banks don't give out stupidly big mortgages that you might not want to pay back.
Look it up if you don't believe me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_marital_jurisprudence . There's no splitting-half-assets in sharia law, instead on divorce the payment is based on what was agreed upon before the marriage, plus child maintenance.
That's not part of Sharia law. In Islam the crime of sex outside of marriage requires a public penetrative act that is witnessed by 4 adults; basically equivalent to having sex in public in the west which is a jailable offense in many US states.
Alternatively, the accused could both do a confession in front of a judge 4 separate times but they can retract this confession at any time and avoid any punishment.
Looks like you didn't read what I posted. Its only a crime if you do it publicly in front of people and they report you just like in every country in the civilized world. Sex outside of marriage is considered a sin but not a crime unless it meets the specific criteria I posted.
I strongly oppose all comments that seem to have the causal relationship reversed, that somehow by some biological effect they are now more depressed than in the past. I think that instead the extreme demands of society are the cause and that suffering in silence is the result.
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
The leader of the New Zealand Green Party once stated "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
Being able to say that as a political figure and not getting an unequivocal drumming down by everyone else shows how far gone the west is. There is no turning this ship around.
Downvote me all you want, pessimism is never popular but its often right.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
> "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
>What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life?
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
Okay snowflake. Nobody is "vilifying men" in general. If you feel targeted, perhaps you should wonder why? I've lived as a man, benefitting of male privileges that I could CLEARLY SEE were there, and that's unfair, so it's normal that women demand an equal play field. And I've never felt "vilified" because I'm a man.
I've been asked to try to think about what privilege I have without having "merited" them. And I did. And I think it's only fair.
I think the fact that in general women are considered to have more mental health issues and men committing suicide way more often shows that this headline is true.
This is not something I think about much (fortunately), but what is the point in attempting suicide by means that are not likely to work? How do we measure "true attempts" vs "cries for help." I guess ultimately they are very close together... but all the same it seems harder to attempt and not succeed.
The person may not definitively want to die, but may wake up one day and not care either way, so attempting is a roll of the dice.
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
Nonsense, that is an America-centric attempt at making up a narrative. The sex differences in suicide outcomes are essentially the same in countries with low to zero firearms ownership, eg Europe, Australia, Japan. If there are no firearms available, then other almost equally lethal methods are used (hanging, trains, etc).
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
To ignore the terrible things going through the minds of people trying¹ and the effects attempts, especially successful ones, can have on others, for a moment²… I wonder if anyone has looked deeper into those two stats to, see if the attempt rate is actually the same but the lower success rate means that the average women in that sort of crisis position attempts more times.
--------
[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
Yeah, because women tend to seek more clinical assistance than men do so of course the attempt % would be higher for them as well, because how are you even gonna know that number for men if they aren't even getting recorded.. the suicide numbers are the only actual real recordable evidence unfortunately.
There's too many men in this world, a surplus. Some percent of men will be the winners (not a large percent) and the rest will be losers who never reproduce and have unhappy lives doing hard work with little reward.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
You are counting the over 50s/60s. Men die off faster and it was more equal in the older generations. That's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about men who are attempting to start their lives and a family and/or date. In that pool, there's A LOT more men than women in the western world. Particularly the USA.
Yes, thank you. I don't know why we're always so dishonest about this topic (especially the most vocal younger crowd).
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
The vast majority of heterosexual men who are unsuccessful romantically has nothing to do with their "status." A bit of self-confidence and the ability to listen to and empathize with women is literally all it takes. Women don't want to date chuds, shocker.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
Does it imply also fewer men getting diagnosed? I presume it does.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
You might be interested in operationalization. Every measurement is also an operationalization - even things like temperature, speed, and weight.
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
Men and women have different mental health crisis spirals.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower.
Male violence against women (and indeed other men) is downstream of men's mental health. It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men. Mentally unhealthy men are dangerous (speaking as a man myself), therefore we should find ways to improve men's mental health.
While I agree with you, I think a lot of the “be better” rhetoric comes from plenty of men in power telling all sorts of marginalized groups the exact same thing. “Bootstraps” culture is just generally toxic.
>It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.
I think the underlying idea is that us men need to hold ourselves accountable. These issues are primarily* issues that men need to fix, and it's unrealistic to expect other demographics to do it for us. Thus, telling men to "be better" is about the most you can expect from other demographics.
*There are nuances here, obviously. Please don't try and reply with some gotcha.
This is a trap, just like it’s a trap when my wife asks me what’s wrong, I give an honest answer, and then I’m scorned for being weak [1]. Men need to cultivate an internal compass. The government can alleviate the issue by stopping the systemic preference of women that they have instituted in education, employment, and law.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
I couldn't help noticing the linked report didn't mention religion (at all?). The list of participating organizations listed one church (Renew Church and maybe one other spiritual organization).
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit.
Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues. I'm sure they'll come out with a nice report on strategies to improve men's wellbeing that won't make a lick of difference unless the world at large starts to shift.
Government reports like this sometimes motivate additional studies and think pieces, which in turn creates a framing that may be used later when society decides it's truly ready for change.
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
This all is just pure virtue signaling and the only beneficiary will be some NGO who gets some money and produces a report and a slide deck which only they will read. It's like the Soviet joke of "we had a 4 hour meeting about improving production in communism in the factory today and after this we will work not better and not worse than before". Until that suffering actually causes measurable damage that affects something on a grand scale that the country needs, nothing really will happen.
Can you expand on this? It seems to me that deep seated cultural issues are the sort of thing that therapy is supposed to address. However, I may be looking at this from the wrong angle.
The people who see issues with themselves get therapy. The ones that see no issues with themselves don't.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
The report gives no indication its a male problem. It’s just a survey targeting men. Maybe its a general mental health problem. We know mental health issues in women have increased over the same time period.
I don't believe I suffer, but it seems pretty obvious why someone would do it in silence. Many times when I tried to get help from institutions for anything nobody seemed to care much at all. It's like you could either deal with your problems in silence or deal with them "out loud" and have people pretend to care while looking helpless.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
The birds they sing,
At break of day.
Start again I heard them say.
Dwell not on what has passed away,
Or what is yet to ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There's a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
FWIW, in these sorts of situations I try to link the place where I found the news. If some tiny local news website brought something to my attention that the bigger players don't, then I think they deserve to be rewarded with the add revenue if people follow my link.
Men feel isolated because they are. They don’t reach out because they intuit being vulnerable will not help them.
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
I have spent a lot of time in countries with strong male community even to this day: cafe culture where the menfolk of the town meet daily, sometimes for hours. I speak the languages and can be a full participant.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or as three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it.
It is very difficult to talk about illness, especially chronic illness. It is one thing to break a bone, or need stitches; something entirely different to say you have chronic migraines or POTS. Every time I mention it I fear I'm sacrificing future employment opportunities.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
It's the nature making decisions here. It has decided to lower the sprawl of human race to rebalance the ecosystem. The nature's correcting forces restore the equilibrium. Governments focussed on worker-driven economy rather than family well-being would naturally force everything towards genderless robotic societies which are ideal for work. European nations even started making policies specifically for punishing people opting to not to work. The world is taken over by powerful new races of creatures - governments, businesses, data and AI. They are nature's agents working to control the human growth. Human race is degraded to an unnecessary biological mass.
This is an issue that us men need to take charge on. While no demographic is immune from engaging in the toxicity that begets the mental health issues plaguing men, men are undoubtedly the worst offenders when it comes to reinforcing said toxicity.
Fixing this will require us to have tough conversations about what it means to be a "man", and to also engage in analysis of the material conditions that ALL people are currently facing in modern society.
I have read lots of calls to have afromentioned tough conversations, but almost never any content from the conversations themselves. So, how would they look?
As Charles Darwin deliberated, and concluded... MARRY MARRY MARRY. Q.E.D.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
Women seem to have this special blind spot for men. It's all "empathy this" and "acceptance that," until it's a man. When they see a weak man, what they feel is disgust. And in their disgust, they try to find reasons to invalidate the suffering. He brought it on himself, or he's choosing to suffer because he refuses to open up, or women are suffering worse, etc.
I think this is an intuitive reaction. It's like being grossed out by dog poop on the ground. You feel the disgust first, and although an evolutionary psychology explanation for that disgust may be true (eg, "you have evolved disgust for dog poop to prevent illness and infection) intellectualizing it further would be totally superfluous. People experience the proximate cause for these sort of evolved behaviors, even when they intellectually know better. If you think you're above this sort of reaction, try "choosing" to be attracted to an 80 year old woman.
It starts in college, having lived through those first couple sentences verbatim. There is a group / pack mentality around this behavior as well, but I'm not really educated on psychology enough to describe it further.
- Currently, the dominant ideology is that there is a victim hierarchy, and if you're in the wrong group (ie, you're privileged) then your opinions and needs don't matter. Moving away from this sort of identitarianism would one important step.
- I think it's important to try to understand why male socialization has fallen apart. (statistically, yes, I'm sure a lot of you still socialize) It's clearly a gendered effect, and I'm genuinely not sure what a reasonable explanation would be. (your comment, men supporting men would play nicely here, although I'm not sure how we make that happen.)
I have had similar experience in my personal life in multiple relationships, including my wife. I've learned to never complain about anything in front of women and just white knuckle whatever difficulties I get at any given moment. This approach helped me secure more respect and better overall response from women. Showing weakness triggers the disgust response that you mentioned. It could be masked under pity, but you lose respect quickly. Working through my issues with male friends is more productive for me.
The only woman who actually cares for me has been my mother.
Someone hurt you; I'm sorry for that. But, you're making sweeping generalizations about ~50% of the world's behavior and, while this may be your perception, I think you could use some genuine therapy to help w/the struggles you clearly are facing.
There are subcultures in which men showing vulnerability are considered bad. But in those subcultures, men are just as mean to other men as women are. And women embracing this are usually not very "empathy this" and "acceptance that" towards anybody.
There is definitely a part of feminist culture is openly aggressive toward men in general while being "empathy this" towards women. But they are usually way more aggressive towards cocky men than weak men.
> The findings will now help guide the development of Canada's first Federal Men and Boys' Health and Well-being Strategy, expected to be released in early 2027.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
Wikipedia says nothing about protests, only indicates neglect as the driver for suicide. Guess its drummed up internet drama taken at face value again.
Like those social media videos about how therapists won't tell you, because they'll lose their business, that the real way to feel better is to just go to Italy. :)
Women are about 1.8x more likely to attempt suicide[1], but men are about 4x as likely to die by suicide.[2] Rates of suicide in female adolescents appear to be increasing at a faster pace than in male adolescents.[3] There is a body of literature suggesting a link to social media.
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
1) Are we sure this is even a male problem? Apparently the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%. What was the answer for women? Turns out they dont ask the question but we know related metrics like anxiety, depression, etc. show a similar trend. What does it say about the views of the Canadian health ministry that they would target this survey at men only?
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
Haven't this been known for a loooooooong time now...? I recall listening to TED talk (silly times) at least 15 years ago already talking about how behavioral pattern difference of seeking help between men/women pointing to this.
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
Literally nothing stopping men from being confident, strong providers if they want to be. Most do not because that is hard and videogames and porn is easy.
That’s a very good example of how problems of men vs women are approached. Women typically get support (which is great! We should continue that) and men are typically blamed for being weak. It’s same pattern for many things, like mental health (like here), general health („it’s not our fault that men don’t take care of themselves”) to men being less educated than women.
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
This is results of general misandry culture in the past two decades or three, it isn’t just laws or hard artifacts you can trace and correct, it is the general acceptance that it’s ok to ridicule men, insult them and belittle them publicly and all over media, and if a man objects it he is gaslighted and called all sort of bad names like insecure or whatever, a man in control? God forbid he is controlling misogynistic {insert other terms}, men natural way of doing things are also attacked, from simple ways of how they sit or act all the way to natural instinct for intimacy where men are visually stimulated yet are attacked or ridiculed for it, and many more examples. And unless a major cultural shift happens, this won’t go anywhere, you can look at the numbers and I don’t mean serious ones like suicides but also employments and others, look up female/male hiring ratio in the past year or two, or in jobs where women get shoved into very niche fields for virtue signaling, not because they are indeed competent, and many more. And obviously very little studies about that because whos gonna fund such research? After all, scientists mostly go with their sponsors directions.
Well because men are physically stronger than women and because some men are wife-beaters or rapists or cheating on their wife, since decades already now there's been a movement to portray all men as raping pigs.
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
A lot of men decrying the fall of man after having been at the top for aeons. Zero perspective or awareness. Everyone deserves positive mental health but that doesn’t mean men need any more power or special treatment than they’ve already had throughout history. More coping skills with reversion to what a normal mean should be.
What you’ve said with your careless comment: “Men have been on top for so long who cares if both the good ones and bad ones kill themselves or get locked up in mental hospitals or abuse drugs.”
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
The comments are revealing. "Men think...", "women need..." We are caught in a semantic-linguistic trap, debating a false dichotomy and pointing out all the places it has respectively harmed us.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
https://www.wgslawfirm.com/family-law/divorce-mediation/2025...
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/famil...
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
I think pandora's box is open never to be shut again on the conversation if we're the same or different.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
no controversy of this in chimps.
no magical evolutionary moment when they became the same in humans.
biologists know this. sociologists start with an unfounded null assumption.
This, a thousand times.
And I say that as a man who has lived in multiple countries in my lifetime, raising my family, through thick and thin.
>mens mental health
I no longer see it as a man problem, its a we problem.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52% the percentage who experienced: mood disorders increased from11% to 16% generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold.
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/publications/health...
And in here, you will find:
This is what I was responding to.https://www.setfords.co.uk/2026/09/01/new-rights-for-cohabit...
At the request of the family law lobby, naturally ...
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/a-fairer-end-to-...
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
And I don't make a habit of pointing out women's smaller stature to call them vulnerable?? Wtf
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
Sharia law actually has some good ideas in it. I think we should investigate Islamic banking and see if any of it would improve our economies. Because charging interest is forbidden in Islam, many of them do mortgages as a rent to own system instead, which leaves the bank on the hook if the house value crashes, instead of the buyer, so banks don't give out stupidly big mortgages that you might not want to pay back.
I wonder why.
Alternatively, the accused could both do a confession in front of a judge 4 separate times but they can retract this confession at any time and avoid any punishment.
Your Islamophobia is showing a bit too much.
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
I think I need that on a T-shirt.
I've been asked to try to think about what privilege I have without having "merited" them. And I did. And I think it's only fair.
Isn't "okay snowflake" a vilification in itself?
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
This is the most plausible hypothesis, judging revealed preferences by the outcomes.
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
hanging/strangulation (9,164, 49%);
self-poisoning (4,098, 22%);
jumping/multiple injuries (2,423, 13%).
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
--------
[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
It's 26%women/19%men some mental health issue and 7%women/4%men serious mental health issue
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower.
I think the underlying idea is that us men need to hold ourselves accountable. These issues are primarily* issues that men need to fix, and it's unrealistic to expect other demographics to do it for us. Thus, telling men to "be better" is about the most you can expect from other demographics.
*There are nuances here, obviously. Please don't try and reply with some gotcha.
Well, other methods haven't worked, such as trying to help or have these discussions. Or relying on science.
> Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.
Unfortunately, men generally don't care about this reasoning.
> ...we should find ways to improve men's mental health.
Unfortunately, men are the ones generally opposed to this. It's a "sign of weakness."
Let's be clear, men work hard to prevent men from improving men's mental health.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit. Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
Which one was it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
Like maybe https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/healthy-livi...
Try solving a difficult problem that has more meaning other than trying to form a problem that is easier solve.
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or as three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
Fixing this will require us to have tough conversations about what it means to be a "man", and to also engage in analysis of the material conditions that ALL people are currently facing in modern society.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
I think this is an intuitive reaction. It's like being grossed out by dog poop on the ground. You feel the disgust first, and although an evolutionary psychology explanation for that disgust may be true (eg, "you have evolved disgust for dog poop to prevent illness and infection) intellectualizing it further would be totally superfluous. People experience the proximate cause for these sort of evolved behaviors, even when they intellectually know better. If you think you're above this sort of reaction, try "choosing" to be attracted to an 80 year old woman.
- Currently, the dominant ideology is that there is a victim hierarchy, and if you're in the wrong group (ie, you're privileged) then your opinions and needs don't matter. Moving away from this sort of identitarianism would one important step.
- I think it's important to try to understand why male socialization has fallen apart. (statistically, yes, I'm sure a lot of you still socialize) It's clearly a gendered effect, and I'm genuinely not sure what a reasonable explanation would be. (your comment, men supporting men would play nicely here, although I'm not sure how we make that happen.)
The only woman who actually cares for me has been my mother.
Not a great example. Elderly women may not be your thing, but nursing homes are apparently hotbeds of STDs. There's someone out there for everyone.
There are subcultures in which men showing vulnerability are considered bad. But in those subcultures, men are just as mean to other men as women are. And women embracing this are usually not very "empathy this" and "acceptance that" towards anybody.
There is definitely a part of feminist culture is openly aggressive toward men in general while being "empathy this" towards women. But they are usually way more aggressive towards cocky men than weak men.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Silverman
That is just tragic :(
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35598742/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/data/index.html
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11225381/
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
3) Bring back the Boy Scouts
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
Good luck with that.
Pull up freedom house and pick any country rated 15 to 60 and see if you like it. Within 3 or 4 you will think, this place is awesome.
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector/50429475
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
Nobody cares about anyone else hardly at all in Canada.
Male / Female ... makes no difference.
If you can't cut it, there's the street bub. Enjoy your tent and/or shelter ridden by gangs and bedbugs.
it's like talking about feelings in math
i fail to see where preconceptions about past aeons fits into a report about statistics, feel free to clarify, ideally with numbers
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.