Don't suffer in silence

Gay men are two to three times more likely to have a mental health problem and 4.3 times more likely to attempt suicide than straight men, and have around double the rate of depression and anxiety.

Working to understand men's mental health
via Dangerous Behavior, by Michael Addis (professor of psychology at Clark University, Massachusetts)

Excerpt:

Men’s mental health is a dramatically understudied and poorly understood area of human wellbeing. Men are half as likely as women to be diagnosed with depression, yet twice as likely to abuse alcohol and drugs.

What’s going on here? One compelling possibility is that what society teaches men about what it means to be a man leads us to express our pain in ways that differ from women. Among the more striking differences is that men are more likely to keep their problems to themselves. We frequently suffer in silence, and sometimes with dire consequences. Our research at Clark University in the US has shown that men who are more likely to value self-reliance and stoicism are more likely to have significant symptoms of depression; they are also more likely to report feeling ashamed of being depressed, and more likely to keep the problem to themselves.

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