For years, one of the dominant messages about men’s mental health has been simple: men need to talk more. Ask for help. Reach out.
Those messages matter. But they put much of the responsibility on the person who is struggling.
What if we asked a different question: What needs to change around men to make it easier to recognize distress and get the help they need?
Improving men’s mental health requires more than encouraging men to seek help. It means recognizing how men may experience and express distress, reducing barriers to care, strengthening social connection and designing services that different groups of men will trust and use.
That question took centre stage at CAMH’s recent Men’s Mental Health Summit, where researchers, clinicians, advocates, community leaders and people with lived experience explored what we know about men’s mental health and suicide prevention – and what we need to do differently because of it.
Ask a different question: How do men experience distress?
Professor Sir Graham Thornicroft, Professor Emeritus of Community Mental Health at King’s College London, challenged the familiar assumption that the problem is simply that men don’t ask for help.
For some men, distress may not initially be recognized or described as a mental health problem. It can show up as withdrawal, substance use, anger, risk-taking or overwork. Expectations around masculinity, self-sufficiency, strength and success can also shape how distress is understood and expressed.
And mental health doesn’t exist separately from the rest of life. Relationships, employment, financial security, loneliness and belonging all matter.
So perhaps the more useful question isn’t only why some men don’t seek help. It’s whether the help we offer is designed around how people actually experience distress – and whether it is relevant and engaging enough that they will use it.
A Public Health Approach to Prevention
For Dr. Christine Yu Moutier, Chief Medical Officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), that question is deeply personal.
Dr. Moutier spoke candidly about experiencing a serious mental health condition while in medical school, in an environment where achievement and performance were deeply connected to identity and self-worth.
With treatment and support, she returned to medicine and later became a chief resident and dean. Her experience also changed how she related to others: physicians and trainees began sharing their own struggles with her. What had felt deeply isolating turned out not to be hers alone.
Years later, after a series of suicide deaths among physicians at her institution, Dr. Moutier helped develop a suicide prevention and wellness approach for physicians.
Her message: vulnerability can be a superpower.
But we cannot simply ask people to be more vulnerable. The environments around them matter too.
Drawing on both personal and professional experience, Dr. Moutier argued that suicide prevention must be approached as a public health priority, not solely an individual responsibility. Effective national initiatives require sustained leadership commitment, long-term investment and coordinated action across sectors, with evidence and lived experience informing efforts at every level. When systems, policies and cultures support mental health, people are more likely to reach out, access care and recover.
Design around people: What 9-8-8 is learning
If we want men to reach out for mental health support, we also need to look at what happens when they do.
Dr. Allison Crawford, Chief Medical Officer for Canada’s 9-8-8: Suicide Crisis Helpline and Senior Scientist at CAMH, shared how 9-8-8 is applying that thinking to suicide prevention.
Led and coordinated nationally by CAMH, 9-8-8 has answered more than one million calls and texts since launching in November 2023. As a learning health system, 9-8-8 gathers data, carries out research, and consults with people with lived experience to understand who it is reaching, identify gaps and continuously improve support. Learnings from this work have informed things like how the service is promoted, and the training that 9-8-8 responders received.
That matters because men and boys are not one population. Age, culture, geography and life circumstances can all shape how people experience distress and seek help.
The question isn’t simply how we get more men to ask for help. It’s how we design mental health services that listen, learn and adapt when they do.
Turn evidence into action
Knowing more is essential. But knowledge alone doesn’t change outcomes.
Catherine Corriveau, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Movember Canada, challenged participants to confront the “so what?”
If we have known about a problem for years, what are we going to do differently because of it?
Movember Canada has helped build the evidence base on men’s health and bring greater attention to its health and economic impacts in Canada. Its research and advocacy are also helping inform a national response: the Government of Canada engaged Movember as an independent convening partner in the development of Canada’s first Men and Boys’ Health and Well-being Strategy.
Catherine’s message was that evidence has to lead somewhere.
Research can tell us what works. Community organizations can help us understand why people may not be showing up. Lived experience can reveal what the system is missing. Bringing those perspectives together gives us a better chance of designing solutions people will actually use.
Read Movember’s reflections on what Canada has told them about men’s health
A national opportunity
Canada’s first Men and Boys’ Health and Well-being Strategy creates an opportunity to turn that learning into action.
The federal strategy is being informed by engagement with men and boys, governments, Indigenous partners, experts and organizations across the country.
The question now is not simply what we know about men’s health, but what we are prepared to do differently.
How do we reach people earlier? How do we design services that different groups of men will trust and use? How do we strengthen connection and belonging? And how do we learn from and build on what is already working in communities across Canada?
There are no simple answers, and no one organization or sector will solve them alone.
CAMH’s Men’s Mental Health Summit was one step in bringing together researchers, clinicians, policymakers, community leaders and people with lived experience to share what we know, learn from one another and identify where collective action can make a difference. This Summit was made possible through generous philanthropic support.
If you are thinking about suicide or worried about someone you know, you can call or text 9-8-8 anytime. The service is available free-of-charge, 24/7/365 and will connect you to a trained responder who will listen, give you a safe space to talk, and help you find ways to cope with what you are going through.
