Mental Health

Have you been following the discussion that began with a question to a small group of women: If you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a bear or a man? The great majority of the women answered, “a bear” and explained that they would feel safer encountering a bear in the forest than a man they didn’t know. The hypothetical question has sparked a broader discussion about why women fear men.

            I’d like to share my own experiences. I will start by laying my cards on the table so you know my biases from the outset:

• I have been a man all my life which now totals 80 years.

• I was born in New York City, grew up in Los Angeles, and have lived in cities most of my life where I never encountered a bear or any other wild animal.

• I am a psychotherapist, author of 17 books about men and their relationships, and have worked with what many consider “dangerous men” in jails, prisons, and treatment centers.

• In 1991 my wife and I moved out of the city, bought land in the hills of Mendocino County outside a small town of Willits, California and I had my first encounter with wild animals including several bears.

            The impetus for our move to the country began when I was diagnosed with a rare adrenal tumor which kills most people before they know they have it. Luckily, I didn’t die. My doctor made the diagnosis—a pheochromocytoma. I had emergency surgery and the tumor was removed.

            When I asked the doctors what caused me to get a tumor, they didn’t know. “Maybe genetics, maybe bad luck, who knows?” they told me. Well, I believe we all have an inner healer who does know. I asked and the answer I got was clear and concise:

            Inner Healer to Jed: Adrenal tumor, adrenaline! Don’t you get it? You’ve living in stressful environments for way too long. You have to slow down.

            Jed to Inner Healer: I have slowed down. I was born to New York, pretty high-stressed place. We moved to Los Angeles where I grew up and went to school, a lower stress place. Now we live in Mellow Marin County. I’ve been slowing down, really I have.

            Inner Healer to Jed: I do hear you. You have slowed down, New York, Los Angeles, Marin. You’ve gotten your stress score down from 100 to an 88. But you have to get it down to a 9.

            Jed to Inner Healer: You’ve got to be kidding me, a 9!  I’d have to change my whole life!!!

            Inner Healer to Jed: Yep.

            So, we found a little cabin on 22 acres of land and moved in and I planned to relax more. It was quiet and peaceful and the neighbors were nice. But the truth was, everything scared me. It was too quiet. After we had been there a month and I was sitting on a ridge overlooking a valley, I heard a very faint sound. So soft, I wasn’t even sure it was there. I finally realized that what I was hearing was the sound of my eye lashes blinking. I was used to the sounds of a big city. It was difficult to think with only the sounds of silence to keep me company.

            What really scared me, though, were the animal sounds I would hear at night. I was determined to follow my inner healer’s advice and learn to slow down and relax. I knew I needed to settle into my new surroundings. There was  a deck at the end of our property where I often went to think about my future. I decided I would learn to address my anxieties and fears by sleeping outside every night during the first summer we were there.

            Each night after dinner, I would walk in the dark from our house to the deck, about a ten-minute walk, where I would spend the night. I walked first with a flashlight, then stop, turn it off, and listen to the night sounds. I would hear the bugs, birds, and small animals moving through the brush. I would snuggle up in my sleeping bag and gradually I got used to the night sounds and got to know the creatures that lived in my new neighborhood in the woods.

            One morning as I was just waking up I saw a large animal coming my way on a narrow trail that led away from my deck where I slept. At first I didn’t know what it was. It was bigger than a big dog but walked differently. It didn’t take me long to realize that a large black bear was walking towards me.

            My mouth went dry, my heart began to pound. I didn’t know what to do. Should I yell and try and scare him away? Should I run and hide? I had no idea. What I finally did was to start talking very fast: “Ah…bear…I’m Jed, I don’t have anything you would want to eat, including me, I know this is your home, I just moved here, I really want to be a good neighbor, please don’t hurt me, I…”

            I ran out of words and the bear stopped a hundred feet from me. I looked at him (or her? I had no idea)  and he looked at me. And I wondered whether the next thing would be a bear at my throat. Instead, he turned around and walked back down the path.

            It was a strange rite of passage for this city boy. I felt like he had decided that I was definitely a little strange but I was OK. He came back periodically when I wasn’t there. I could tell because he marked his territory by scratching marks on the posts of my deck. I had a number of encounters with bears, a few real scary one when we encountered a mamma bear with her cubs and she reared up on her hind legs and barked her cubs up a three. I bowed low and slowly backed away.  I had a healthy respect for bears and other wild animals but we got to know each other.

            Not so, when I had my first encounter with a strange man. One morning I was walking on my property and suddenly a strange man turned the corner on the trail. I yelled, turned around and ran. I looked over my shoulder to see if he was chasing me and realized that he was running away, looking over his shoulder to see if I was chasing him.

            We both stopped running and slowly approached each other cautiously. I told him I owned this property and told me he was visiting neighbors and had gone for a walk and gotten lost the night before. He had slept out all night and was trying to find his way back when he ran into me. I drove him back to the neighbors who saw me as a hero for finding their friend and we shared stories about our encounters with bears and men.

What Evolutionary Science Can Teach Us About Bears and Men and How to Stay Safe

            We can’t understand bears, men, or how to be safe unless we know something about evolutionary science. In their book The Universe Story, cosmologist Dr. Brian Swimme and historian Dr. Thomas Berry, share our evolutionary history. Here are a few key players and the dates they joined the party:

• 12 billion years ago, the universe began with a bang.
• 4 billion years ago life first emerged.
• 216 million years ago the first mammals appeared.
• 55 million years ago the first bear-like animals evolved.
• 2.6 million years ago the first humans, Homo habilis, walked the earth.

            In a recent book, Solving Modern Problems with a Stone-Age Brain, evolutionary psychologists Douglas T. Kenrick and David E. Lunberg-Kenrick, detail the seven fundamental problems the humans have faced since we arrived. We have to:

1. Survive by meeting our basic needs for water, food, and shelter.
2. Protect ourselves from attackers and plunderers.
3. Make and keep friends.
4. Gain status and respect from our fellow tribal members.
5. Find a mate.
6. Hang on to that mate.
7. Focus on family and raise good children.

            What they say about basic challenges number 1 and 2, can help us better understand how to stay safe in today’s world. The first step is clear. We must get what we need to survive or our story ends here. All our direct ancestors survived and completed all seven steps.

            They go on to talk about the reality that in our evolutionary past, as well as in modern times, we have a lot more to fear from men than we do from wild animals. In the Bronx Zoo, there is a classic sign on one exhibit that advertised, “World’s Most Dangerous Predator.” Above the sign was a mirror.

            Humans truly are a dangerous species and the danger is most commonly coming from men. Whether you are venturing into the remote unexplored jungles where modern hunter-gatherers live or looking at death rates from our evolutionary past, Dr. Kenrick and other evolutionary-informed scientists have found that men are the more violent half of humanity.

“The odds that a stranger is a potential threat to your physical safety are many times higher if that stranger is a male. They are especially high if he is a young adult male and if he is with a group of other young adult males.”

            So, it is natural that women, and men, would be more fearful of meeting an unknown man in the woods than a bear. But the fact that our modern brains still have the old wiring from our evolutionary past, does not mean that we should be afraid of all bears or all men. As I learned, we are all safer when we learn about the others who we will encounter in our lives.

            I learned to get comfortable with the bears who lived in my neighborhood. I also learned I could talk to the bears, let them know I was no threat, and I imagined they would listen. I found out I could overcome my immediate reaction to flee or fight when confronted by an unknown male. I could stop and realize we were both afraid of each other and taking time to calm down and talk helped us both connect in a positive way.

            What I have learned from evolutionary science is that most wild animals can be our friends and so can most men. The way to be safer in the world is to connect more deeply with ourselves, each other, and this beautiful planet we all share.

            One more point. Humans have certainly done our evolutionary job well in populating the world. We don’t need more and more people, but we could certainly use more wisdom from our animal elders. As Thomas Berry reminds us,

“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”

            I have worked with a lot of dangerous and violent men in my life. I agree with the world of psychologist James Hollis. “Men’s lives are violent because their souls have been violated.” I invite those interested to check out our Moonshot for Mankind.

The post Man or Bear: What Evolutionary Science Can Tell Us About Male Violence and How to Stay Safe appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 3—Gender-Specific Healing and Man Therapy

            In Part 1, I addressed the questions, “Men and Mental Health, What Are We Missing?” Part 2 focused on the way that “Mental Health Crises Are Putting Everyone at Risk.” In Part 3, I will explore my own journey addressing issues that address the unique issues faced by men and how the emerging field of Gender-Specific Healing and Men’s Health is a key to the future of health care.

            I have become an expert in the field of Gender-Specific Healing and Men’s Mental Health due, in no small part, to the fact that my interest began more than 80 years ago. Prior to my much-anticipated birth, my parents were convinced that I would be a girl and had girl’s names picked out as well as an assortment of cuddly girls dolls that were popular in 1943, the year I was born. It took my parents several days to accept the reality of my little penis and to agree on a name for their new baby boy.

            At age three I announced that I no longer wanted to wear my white “baby shoes” and announced I wanted a change. My mother took me to the shoe store for my first pair of “big-boy shoes”. After perusing the store I found my shoes and jumped for joy when my eyes landed on a pair of red Keds. The salesman measured my feet and returned with a box which he opened carefully and good out a beautiful pair of blue shoes. I was crestfallen and didn’t understand the logic of his cheerful explanation. “Blue is for boys,” he told us smiling at my mother. “Red is for girls and we wouldn’t want our little man to get off on the wrong foot…chuckle, chuckle.”

            Bless her heart, my mother was not amused and told the clerk in no uncertain terms to give her son what he asked for and I danced out of the store wearing my beautiful red Keds. I reasoned since I was a boy and I liked the color red, then red was obviously a boy’s color.

            When I grew up and got married and our son, Jemal, was born on November 21, 1969 and our daughter, Angela, on March 22, 1972, my wife and I promised that we wouldn’t try to push our children into societal pigeon holes or gender-restricting boxes of what boys and girls must do and be. Yet, like most parents, it soon became apparent that each of our children were unique and different and that there were clearly some differences that seemed sex-specific beyond the obvious reality of a penis being part of Jemal’s anatomy and a vagina part of Angela’s body.

            After receiving a Master of Social Work degree (and later a PhD in International Health), I began specializing in work with men and their families. My first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man was published in 1983, followed by Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, and The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet.

            My work gained international success with the publication of Male Menopause in 1997. After working with many mid-life men and their wives, it became clear to me that men also went through a biologically based “change of life” that had many similarities and differences from what women experienced. The book was translated into fourteen foreign languages and I spent the next seven years speaking around the world and offering trainings for professional working with issues of midlife and aging.

            In 2002, I met Marianne Legato, M.D., following the publication of her book, Eve’s Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life.

“Until now, we’ve acted as though men and women were essentially identical except for the differences in their reproductive function,”

said Dr. Legato.

“In fact, information we’ve been gathering over the past ten years tells us that this is anything but true, and that everywhere we look, the two sexes are startingly and unexpectedly different not only in their normal function but in the ways they experience illness.”

            The need for gender-specific health care is gaining increased support. According to David C. Page, M.D., professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),

“There are 10 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them is sex specific. We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome, but men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease.”

            Dr. Page summarizes the importance of his research.

“We need to build a better tool kit for researchers that is XX and XY informed rather than our current gender-neutral stance.  We need a tool kit that recognizes the fundamental difference on a cellular, organ, system, and person level between XY and XX.  I believe that if we do this, we will arrive at a fundamentally new paradigm for understanding and treating human disease.”

Man Therapy: The Future of Gender-Specific Health Care for Men

            Although the research on gender-specific medicine was intended to be for men as well as women, Dr. Legato acknowledges that men’s health has been neglected. In a recent interview she told me that gender-specific medicine is not just about women’s health, but about the health of both sexes, the funding for our initial research came from companies that were focused on new health products and services for women.

            In an article, “Healer, Heal Thyself,”  Dr. Legato told me candidly,

“My physician father illustrated many of the biological and societal hazards of being male. My mother outlived him by a decade, mourning his absence every day. The premature death of men is the most important—and neglected—health issue of our time.”

            I first heard about the work of Man Therapy when I met its founder and creator, Joe Conrad in November 2021. I was impressed with the creative ways that Man Therapy addressed serious issues like male-type depression and suicide prevention. I invited Joe to join a new venture I called our Moonshot for Mankind and Humanity. Joe’s team helped us create a website and introductory video.

            The purpose of the Moonshot for Mankind is to bring together organizations and individuals who are doing positive and important work to help improve men’s mental, emotional, and relational health. Man Therapy is one of the best I’ve seen since it has been proven to be effective in preventing suicide and engaging men in improving their lives.

            “What began as a suicide prevention campaign has morphed into a men’s mental health campaign where the goal is to support all men before they are ever in crisis,” says Conrad. “We remind men that taking care of their mental health is the manliest things a man can do, that therapy comes in many forms and connect men and their loved ones to information, tools and resources. Our goals remain to bust through the stigma, increase help-seeking behavior and reduce suicide among working-age men.”

            In 2022, I interviewed Joe Conrad and wrote an article, “Man Therapy: Why Gender-Specific Health Care is Good for Men, Women, and The  World.”  Joe told me,

“Man Therapy was launched in 2010 and has had more than 1.5 million visits to the site. Visitors have completed 400,000 ‘head inspections’ and there have been 40,000 clicks to the crisis line.”

            That was impressive enough, but I also learned that the program had been evaluated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study shows that men who access Man Therapy, as a digital mental health intervention, experience a decrease in depression and suicidal ideation, a reduction in poor mental health days, and an increase in help-seeking behavior. Additionally, the study shows that men in the Man Therapy control group reported statistically significant improved rates of engaging in formal help-seeking behaviors through tools like online treatment locator systems, making or attending a mental health treatment appointment, or attending a professionally led support group.

The Man Therapy Community and Provider Directory: You Can Join Now

            When I began working in the field of gender-specific healing and men’s health there was a huge need for services, but very few practitioners focused on the unique health issues facing men. The need continues to increase, but now there are many more health care providers. For the first time, Man Therapy is creating a Man Therapist’s Directory.

            Joe Conrad says,

“The Man Therapy team is excited to announce that their very own Man Therapist Provider Directory is officially live. Knowing that men face unique mental health challenges, our aim in building this tool is to create a first-of-its-kind network of therapists and providers that are uniquely qualified and passionate about working with men.”

            He goes on to say,

“By joining our Provider Directory, you can leverage Man Therapy’s thousands of unique site visits every day to promote your services directly to men who are actively seeking help. This listing includes your headshot or logo, a brief description of your services, and a link directly to your personal website for more information about working with you.”

            I was excited to join and I immediately signed up. You can see my listing here. Joe’s long-term goal, which I am excited to support, is to make Man Therapy the world’s leading mental health brand. If you are a mental health professional or know someone who is, you may want to learn more about Man Therapy.

            “Man Therapy formally invites you to be among the first to join our growing network,”

says Joe Conrad.

“Please click this link and follow the instructions for submitting your application. Once you get to the payment section, insert this discount code – mtlaunch50 – to receive 50% off an annual membership to our network as a thank you for all you do to support men.”

            This is a wonderful opportunity to get in on the ground floor and join this community of healers and those seeking to improve their own health. Stay tuned for more articles that will explore additional issues about the importance of men’s mental health. If you are not already receiving my free weekly newsletter you can sign up here.

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Part 2—Mental Health Crises Are Putting Everyone At Risk

            This is the second part of a multi-part series on “The Future of Men’s Mental Health.” I have been concerned about men’s mental health since I was five years old and my mid-life father took an overdose of sleeping pills after he had become increasingly depressed when he couldn’t support  his family doing what he loved. In Part 1 of this series, “Men and Mental Health, What Are We Missing?”, I detailed recent research showing the problems that have been neglected up until now.

            In a previous series of articles, “Healer Heal Thyself: Why Health Care Professionals Are Becoming Stressed, Depressed, and Suicidal,” I describe the challenging realities facing health-care professionals as well as those who seek them out for health support and healing.  In Part 1, I noted:

“Health care workers compared with non-healthcare workers have greater risks for mental health problems and long-term work absences due to mental disorders, and are at increased risk of suicide, compared with workers in other fields.”

“Our results extend earlier research from outside the United States that health care workers compared with non-healthcare workers have greater risks for mental health problems and long-term work absences due to mental disorders,” said Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Public Health and professor of Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “The importance of increased suicide risk of health care support workers is underscored by their growth from nearly 4 million in 2008 to 6.6 million in 2021.”

            Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician, author, and expert in physician suicide prevention. In her book, Physician Suicide Letters Answered, she says, “I’ve been a doctor for twenty years. I’ve not lost a single patient to suicide. I’ve lost only colleagues, friends, lovers–ALL male physicians–to suicide.”

            Males are not the only ones who die by suicide, but we are much more likely to die. Dr. Wible details the reasons that so many doctors and other healthcare professionals die by suicide including the following:

• Doctoring is more than a job; it’s a calling, an identity.
• With so much need, we often put the needs of others ahead of our own.
• Most practitioners become burned out, overworked, or exhausted.
• Workaholics are admired in medicine and other healthcare professions.
• Caring for sick people can make us sick if we don’t take care of ourselves.
• Seeing too much pain and not enough joy is unhealthy.
• We don’t take very good care of themselves or each other.
• We don’t acknowledge the reality that we are at high risk of overwork, overwhelm, breakdown, and self-harm.

            These issues are not only prevalent in males, but there are sex differences that we need to understand and address. According to Marianne J. Legato, MD, Founder of the Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine,

“Until now, we’ve acted as though men and women were essentially identical except for the differences in their reproductive function. In fact, information we’ve been gathering over the past ten years tells us that this is anything but true, and that everywhere we look, the two sexes are startingly and unexpectedly different not only in their normal function but in the ways they experience illness.”

            In Part 2  of the series, I talk about the future of gender-specific healthcare and describe my interview with Dr. Legato, who told me,

“The premature death of men is the most important—and neglected—health issue of our time.”

I also described my interview with Richard V. Reeves, author of, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It and founder of American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM). Reeves says,

“It became clear to me that the problems of boys and men are structural in nature, rather than individual; but are rarely treated as such. The problem with men is typically framed as a problem of men. It is men who must be fixed, one man or boy at a time. This individualist approach is wrong.”

            In Part 3, I discuss the unique times we are living in today where rapid change of modern life have created a unique set of mental health problems that must be solved on a systemic as well as a personal level.  The futurist, Alvin Toffler called the problem Future Shock and said,

“It will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease.”

            Toffler notes that Future Shock results when societies are faced with too much change in too short a time. Not only are we being overwhelmed with the rate of change in our lives, but also the overwhelming complexity of our social systems that  can lead to collapse of entire civilizations. Rebecca C. Costa describes the effects of complexity in her groundbreaking book, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse. The result is a critical increase in fear and anxiety, which impacts everyone.

            In his book, Anxious: Using The Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s leading mental health experts says,

“Collectively fear and anxiety disorders are the most prevalent of all psychiatric problems in the United States, affecting about twenty  percent of the population with an associated economic cost estimated to exceed $40 billion annually.”

            Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a professor of neural science and psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, says,

“We live in an age of anxiety. Like an omnipresent, noxious odor we’ve grown used to, anxiety has become a constant condition, a fact of life on this planet. From global pandemics to crashing economies, to intense, daily family challenges, we have plenty of justifiable reasons to feel anxious.”

            The effects of all these changes are causing social and political upheavals. On April 7, 2024, The Morning Show on CBS aired a segment on the new movie, “Civil War” which follows a team of journalists who travel across the United States during a rapidly escalating Second American Civil War, that has engulfed the entire nation. It offers an unflinching look at a nation divided and violent, not in the 1860s, but today. The movie is a warning about potential things to come and like all wars, males are the main combatants.

Bringing Healers and Health-Seekers Together in Community

            It is becoming increasingly clear that the separation between “healers” and “those seeking help” is an artificial divide. We are all in need of help and support in addressing mental health issues and we are all able to learn to help ourselves and others. I believe it is time to bring healers and seekers together. In a recent article, “The Future of Mental Health: Bringing Together Health Seekers and Providers,” I noted the following:

            “We are living in crazy times, where the whole world seems angry, anxious, stressed, and depressed and things are getting worse. In 2018 the American Psychological Association surveyed a thousand U.S. adults about their sources and levels of anxiety. The APA found that 39% of Americans reported being more anxious than they were in 2017, and an equal amount (39%) had the same level of anxiety as the previous year. That’s nearly 80% of the population experiencing anxiety.

What are people most concerned about? The APA survey reported that:

• 68% worried about health and safety.
• 67% reported finances as their source of anxiety.
• 56% were stressed about our political system and elections.

            The APA also found that 63% of Americans felt that the future of the nation was a large source of stress. 59% checked the box that “the United States is at the lowest point they can remember in history.”

            Men in the United States die by suicide, on average, at a rate four times higher than women. But the suicide rate for men is even higher in older age groups.

            Clearly with statistics like these, we can no longer view “mental illness” as simply a problem of individuals. We are experiencing a problem of whole systems collapsing and we need to develop new systems to bring about repair. My colleague, Margaret J. Wheatley, author of the book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership says,

“Our task is to create Islands of Sanity, both internally and within our sphere of influence, where sanity prevails, where people can recall and practice the best human qualities of generosity, caring, creativity, and community.”

            It seems both appropriate and timely that we create a health community focused on men’s mental health as an “island of sanity” that can offer support and services to heal men, as well as our families, communities, and the world.

            We need a new approach for addressing men’s mental health issues. In the next parts of this series, I will address the important topic of depression and anxiety. I will examine the differences between the ways males express their dis-ease and wounds verses the way females do so. If you’d like to read more articles like these, please visit me at MenAlive.com and receive our free newsletter with new articles and tools you can use to improve your mental, emotional, and relational health. 

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Part 1 — Men and Mental Health, What Are We Missing?

            I  have been interested in men’s mental, emotional, and relational health for a long time. When I was five years old my mid-life father became increasingly irritable, angry, and depressed because he felt he couldn’t support our family, my mother and me, doing the work he loved. In desperation he took an overdose of sleeping pills to stop the pain. Fortunately, he didn’t die, but  our lives were never the same. He was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

             My father had been an actor in New York and moved to California with the hopes of working in the emerging movie and television industry. But like many creative artists of the period he ran into the “red scare,” was blacklisted, and couldn’t find work. His time in the mental hospital only made him worse. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and how I could prevent it from happening to other families.

            After graduating from college I was accepted into U.C. San Francisco Medical School with hopes of becoming a psychiatrist. I hoped to learn and develop the skills to help men like my father as well as the families who love them. However, medicine, at the time, was too restrictive for me and I transferred to U.C. Berkeley where I earned my Master of Social Work Degree. My initial interest focused on addiction medicine, but I soon expanded my work to include Gender-Specific Medicine and men’s health. I later returned to school and earned a PhD in International Health. My dissertation research was published as a book: Male vs. Female Depression: Why Men Act Out and Women Act In.

            Following the birth of our first son, Jemal, in 1969 and daughter, Angela, in 1972, I launched MenAlive.com as my window to the world to house my books, articles, and on-line programs. I’ve had seventeen books published including international best-sellers Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression, as well as trend-setting books including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions, The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet, Stress Relief for Men, and Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity.

            The field of gender-specific healing and men’s mental health has grown considerably since I began in 1972. I estimate that there are now at least a thousand organizations that focus on various aspects of men’s health. In 2021, I invited several colleagues who were doing great work to join me in what I called my Moonshot Mission for Mankind and Humanity. We began meeting monthly to get to know each other, share ideas, and create an on-line hub to bring individuals and organizations together to help men live fully healthy lives.

            With the help and support of one of our founding members, Joe Conrad, Founder and CEO of Man Therapy, we developed a website and introductory film at MoonshotforMankind.com.  I believe that men are both the “canaries in the coalmine” alerting us to the problems faced by humanity and also they are the key players in solving the problems that undermine the health of all. The Moonshot site shares our vision and call to connect:

“The journey to heal humanity has begun.”

Our Moonshot vision can be summarized simply:

            “We believe man’s mental, emotional, and relational health is the key to empowering men to live long and well. Our mission is to help men live healthier, happier, more cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of purpose and productivity, where men are supported and valued as they make positive contributions to their families, friends, and communities. When that happens, families grow stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its next leap forward.”

Men and Mental Health: What Are We Missing?

            According to report by Derek M. Griffith, PhD, Ayo Ogunbiyi, MPH, and Emily Jaeger, MPH at Georgetown University’s Center for Men’s Health Equity,

“Men aren’t the problem. The way that we — society as a whole and health care providers specifically — treat them is.”

In an April 2, 2024 article titled “Men and mental health: What are we missing?,” they detail a number of important issues that we often fail to address including the following:

• It is time that primary care physicians, mental health service providers, and policymakers look critically at the accuracy and utility of their assumptions and explanations for men’s rates of depression, anxiety, burnout, substance abuse, and other common mental health conditions.

• 40% of men with a reported mental illness received mental health care services in the past year, compared with 52% of women with a reported mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

• The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the crisis of men’s mental health.

• The uncertainty of the pandemic, loneliness from social distancing, financial stresses, relationship challenges, and other contextual factors contributed to increased rates of men having difficulty sleeping, alcohol and substance use, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

• Traditionally, men are socialized to define their worth by their ability to contribute economically to a household. However, as the labor market has shifted away from traditionally male-dominated jobs, men must now redefine their worth outside of their employment, income, and home.

• The notion of “precarious manhood,” which is the belief that manhood is an achieved social status that must be earned and constantly defended, means that men may feel it is their character — rather than their behavior — being judged during more tumultuous economic times.

• Even when men seek care, that care often falls short. Data from Canada and the United States found that more than 60% of men who died by suicide had accessed mental health care services within the previous year.

• When men do seek mental health care services, it is not uncommon for them to feel that providers mislabel and underestimate their needs, and that these providers do not seem to have a genuine interest in their problems.

• The fact that men are diagnosed with depression at lower rates than women, despite their higher rates of suicide, substance use, and violent behavior, suggests that more could be done to improve the tools used to diagnose men with depression.

• While some mental health care service providers may be gender sensitive and recognize the ways that aggressiveness, alcohol use, and risky behavior are part of the presenting symptoms men with depression may exhibit, there are few courses and trainings that focus on gender differences in mental health, potentially leading to mental health care service providers being less equipped to serve and offer gender-sensitive resources to men.

            We need a new approach for addressing men’s mental health issues. In the second part of this series, I will address the reality that men’s mental health issues don’t just impact men. They impact everyone. If you’d like to read more articles like these, please visit me at MenAlive.com and receive our free newsletter with new articles and tools you can use to improve your mental, emotional, and relational health. 

The post The Future of Men’s Mental Health appeared first on MenAlive.

“Human beings are creatures of belonging which we achieve through three marriages. First, through relationship with other people and other things (particularly and very personally, to one other person in relationship or marriage); second, through work; and third, through an understanding of what it means to be themselves.” David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimaging Work, Self and Relationship.

            For more than fifty years I have helped people achieve success in all three kinds of relationships. Like many I married young. My wife and I were together for ten years and had two children before our marriage broke up. After a time of pain and healing, I fell in love again, and remarried. Looking back, I can see that one was a rebound relationship and it too ended.

            Endings are painful for everyone, but when you’re a marriage and family counselor who makes his living helping fix relationships, it is not only painful, but shameful as well. I talk about it on my website, MenAlive.com in an introductory video, “Confessions of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor.” Fortunately, I got my own help, worked through unhealed trauma from my past, and learned what it truly takes to have a successful marriage. My wife, Carlin, and I have been happily married for forty-four years.

            We all want a life that is happy and joyful, but how to achieve success is not often clear and easy.

“If you have to make one life choice, right now, to set yourself on the path to future health and happiness, what would it be?”

This question was asked by two world-renowned social scientists, Robert Waldinger, MD and Marc Schulz, PhD.

            Dr. Waldinger is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study on Adult Development. Dr. Schultz is the associate director. The Harvard Study is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It began in 1938 and offers the most scientifically supported guidance for achieving a great life.

            The latest findings are reported in Waldinger’s and Schulz’s book, The Good Life: Lessons From The World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. In a 2007 survey, millennials were asked about their most important life goals. Seventy-six percent said that becoming rich was their number one goal. Fifty percent said a major goal was to become famous. More than a decade later, after millennials had spent more time as adults, similar questions were asked again. Fame was now lower on the list, but top goals again included things like making money, having a successful career, and becoming debt-free.

            What does the data from thousands of interviews over eighty-six years tell us? If we want a great life what is the one thing that is more important than others? The answer can be stated in three simple words: Create Good Relationships.

“In fact, good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-six years of the Harvard Study,”

say Drs. Waldinger and Schulz,

“and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this:

            “Good Relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”

The Three Marriages We Must Embrace to Have a Successful Life

            In his book The Three Marriages: Reimaging Work, Self and Relationship, David Whyte says,

“Despite our use of the word “marriage” only for a committed relationship between two people, “in reality everyone is committed consciously or unconsciously to three marriages.”

            Whyte goes on to say,

“There is that first marriage, the one we usually mean, to another; that second marriage, which can so often seem like a burden, to work or vocation; and that third and most likely hidden marriage to a core conversation inside ourselves. We can call these three separate commitments marriages because at their core they are usually lifelong commitments and, as I wish to illustrate, they involve vows made either consciously or unconsciously.”

            For most of my life I tried to find a balance between my work life and my love life. The truth is that I was much better at work than I was at love. It is not surprising. I had my first job when I was seven years old. My father had left when I was five, committed to a mental hospital after taking an overdose of sleeping pills because he had become increasingly stressed and depressed because he couldn’t make a living to support my mother and me.

            With my father gone, my mother had to find work outside the home. We had little money beyond what was needed for the essentials, so I learned early to work for anything I truly wanted. I got good at work, but like many who grew up without a father and mother at home, what I learned about having a healthy and happy married life was minimal and I was too busy hustling for my next job success to have time to wonder about what it meant to get to know my true self.

            For too many of us we feel like we are going up and down on a teeter-totter with our work and love lives competing for our attention while our personhood often gets neglected and forgotten. David Whyte offers us all a great service when he suggests this basic reality:

            “Each of those marriages, is at its heart, nonnegotiable. We should give up the attempt to balance one  against another, of, for instance, taking away from work to give more time to a partner, or vice versa, and start thinking of each marriage conversing with, questioning, or emboldening the other two.”

            With the framework of the three marriages, we can ask ourselves where we might need improvement. Here’s a little scale I find useful.

How would you rate yourself in all five areas? I feel successful in all five areas, but it has been a lifelong process of healing and learning. I still have a way to go yet, like all of us. My score was 24. How about yours?

Bringing It All Together

            For me, I have come to see achieving success at the three marriages as a true hero’s journey, one that lasts a lifetime. My wife, Carlin, is part Native American. In our area, there are several women who weave beautiful baskets made out of local materials that grow in nature. A well-known basket weaver described a well-made basket as a metaphor for creating a great life.

            Here’s how she describes the process.

“Our life is a basket woven from many different strands, each essential for a strong container. Each part of our life is one strand in this basket.It’s impossible to weave multiple strands at the same time; we need to attend to the strand that requires our attention without losing awareness of the others. Every strand will get our attention—just not all at the same time. I know I give attention to where I am most needed, knowing that I will then move on to the next demand. The basket holds my life as I strengthen individual strands. I’m no longer on a teeter-totter—I am weaving my life into something whole and lovely.”

            When I reflect on my own life, there are times when I must focus on my wife, Carlin, knowing that there are other parts of my life that will require my attention at another time. At other times, one of our five children or seventeen grandchildren all for my attention. Yet, I can’t ever forget my work and my commitment to my calling. Running through all these “strands of my basket” is my commitment to my deepest self, getting to know who I really am and learning to love the man I am with all my flaws as well as my gifts.

            I have written about how I have integrated these strands in the books I have written. If you are interested in learning about me and my work, I recommend, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man, 12 Rules for Good Men, and Long Live Men: The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope for Humanity.

            If you want to learn more about me and my relationship life, I recommend The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationship and Why the Best is Still to Come, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound, and Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions.

            If you would like to take one of my on-line courses, I recommend:

            Navigating the 5 Stages of Love.

            Healing the Irritable Male Syndrome.

            Healing the Family Father Wound.

            If you would like to join our mission to improve the lives of men and their families, I recommend:

            The Moonshot for Mankind and Humanity.

            If you would like to do individual or couple counseling with me, drop me a note at Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Counseling” in the subject line. I will send you the information.             If you would like to receive my free weekly newsletter with updates and new articles, you can sign up here.

The post How to Become Successful at the Three Essential Marriages for Achieving a Great Life appeared first on MenAlive.

It isn’t easy being a man in today’s world. The same is true for being a woman. Finding the right partner and creating a joyful, long-lasting, marriage is truly a miracle. In their book. In their book, A Couple of Miracles: One Couple, More Than a Few Miracles, Joyce and Barry Vissell share their life journey. Joyce, a nurse/psychotherapist and Barry doctor/psychiatrist, offer wisdom for men, women, and couples who are wanting to find the secrets for a long and successful life, career, and marriage.

            I have known Joyce and Barry for many years. My wife, Carlin, and I attended a couple’s retreat with them to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Our forty-four-year marriage has been enriched by our time with Joyce and Barry.

            Joyce and Barry have been a couple since 1964, have raised three children, written ten books, and helped countless people in their workshops and counseling practice. They can be reached at SharedHeart.org. I recently did a podcast interview with Barry and we explored their work, the new book, Barry’s work with men, Joyce’s work with women, and their joint work with couples.

I recently attended a men’s retreat with Barry and seventeen other men from around the country. It was a unique and wonderful experience that I recommend to all men. From the very beginning Barry invited us all to be vulnerable and share the real challenges we were facing in our lives. He started by sharing his own, things that most of us hide, even from ourselves.

“We need to let our partners see us more deeply,”

said Barry.

“We need to feel and express our feelings. Men sometimes feel hurt or afraid, but we’re often taught to keep it well hidden.”

Barry went on to share some of the real problems that he and Joyce have experienced in their own lives. As others shared, hearts opened, tears were shed. We talked about our hopes and dreams and our losses and betrayals.

I shared my experiences, having been married twice before, and the shame I felt being  “a twice-divorced marriage and family counselor.” I talked about my forty-four-year marriage to my wife, Carlin, and my fear and anguish at the thought of losing her.

Barry shared his own fears of what he would do if Joyce died. Other men opened up about broken promises and broken marriages. Several men had recently dealt with relationships that had recently ended and shared their pain and anger.

 “Outwardly, we often present a strong, competent image,”

said Barry.

“Showing our human frailty to our loved ones gives them a very wonderful gift of love. When we feel sad, instead of covering it up with activity, we can share it with a loved one. Instead of jumping into an angry posture every time we feel hurt, the vulnerable and courageous approach is to reveal the hurt feelings directly, without anger or resentment.”

Barry acknowledged that many of us were in relationship with strong, competent, women. He encouraged us to also recognize “the little girl” that lives inside each of the women in our lives.

When I returned home after the end of the retreat, I shared what Barry had said about “the little girl” within. Carlin wept with recognition.

“I’ve spent my whole life taking care of others,”

Carlin said.

“I haven’t done a very good job taking care of the little girl inside me.

I held her and let her little girl be vulnerable, as she has so often held me as I let the little boy in me reveal his worries, fears, and pain.  I used to think that it was manly to suffer in silence, to be forever strong for others. But I now know that our vulnerability is our real superpower.

I have been somewhat obsessed with life and death for a long time now. When I was five years old my father took an overdose of sleeping pills when he became increasingly depressed because he couldn’t support his family doing the work he loved. Though he didn’t die, our lives were never the same. I grew up wondering what happened to my father and when it would happen to me. For most of my life I blocked out the terror of my childhood.

I grew up like many males, denying my own vulnerability, and imagined that if I were smart enough and successful enough I could outrun my fears and furies. At various times I acted like I was the lone wolf, top dog, alpha male, lone ranger, superman. I didn’t trust others, particularly other guys, who I felt I needed to compete against in order to get women, money, power, and glory I craved.

That changed for me when I joined my first men’s group in 1979. Carlin has said on many occasions that the reason she believes we have had a successful forty-four-year marriage is because I’ve been in a men’s group for forty-five years. Our group continues to meet, though three of our members have died. I’m now the eldest member of the group as I recently celebrated my 80^th birthday.

Carlin has also been in several women’s groups which give her the love and support that only women can give. We also have been in a mixed group, we call “The Village Circle” where men and women can learn to love and support each other.

Joyce and Barry have had a similar path and offer counseling, retreats, and much more. You can get their latest information at SharedHeart.org. The world needs more miracles. We need each other and the world needs each of us to be the best men and women we can be.

We live in challenging times. Vaclav Havel, Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and dissident, offers an important truth about the times in which we live.

“I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”

In a recent article, “Men and Relationships,” Barry says,

“Over the years of working with men and their relationships, not to mention my own 59-year relationship with Joyce, I have seen some central issues emerge.”

He goes on to enumerate eight areas that are particularly important. Number eight is “Reach Out More to Other Men.”

Barry says,

“Many men tend to isolate themselves from meaningful relationships with other men. I have observed that many men are nearly starved for father/brother love. Because of our fear of this need, we have pushed away half the population of the earth. Practice vulnerability with other men, and you will find it becomes even easier to be vulnerable with your partner. Deepening your friendship with a man leads to deepening your friendship with yourself. And this allows you to become more accessible to your partner.”

Barry and Joyce practice what they recommend to others. Both Carlin and I have benefitted from their wisdom over the years. You will too. You can visit Barry and Joyce here.

If you appreciate articles like these, come visit me, Jed Diamond, here.  

The post The Miracle of Men, Women, and Couples: Allowing Our Vulnerabilities to Bring Us Together appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 3 – What We Can Do

There is a worldwide contagious disease that most of us have experienced, but very few understand. According to the man who first identified this disease, Alvin Toffler,

“It will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease.”

Most healthcare professionals see the effects of this disease in their practices. Most are suffering from it themselves but aren’t even aware that they have been infected. It is called “Future Shock” and the human species has been impacted for a long time. Here’s how Toffler described this disease when he first wrote about it in 1965 in an article in Horizon magazine:

“I coined the term ‘future shock’ to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.”

Toffler goes on to say in his book, Future Shock.

“It became clear that future shock is no longer a distantly potential danger, but a real sickness from which increasingly large numbers of already suffer. This psycho-biological condition can be described in medical and psychiatric terms. It is the disease of change.”

I think we can all agree that change of all kinds has continued to accelerate since 1970, but we have not taken the “intelligent steps to combat it” that Toffler called on us to address fifty-four years ago. Since then, there is another disease we have failed to address. In addition to the disease of change, we are experiencing a disease of complexity.

The latter problem was described by Rebecca Costa in her book, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse that was published in 2010. She examined complex cultures throughout the world and described what happens when our human brains are unable to handle the complexity of society.

Costa examined past civilizations that had collapsed from the Mayans to the Roman Empire to see what we could learn that would help us address our current culture and predict whether we are heading for collapse. She found a numerous early warning signs including the following:

1. Gridlock. Like a major traffic jam, major parts of the system fail to function.

“A civilization insists on deploying methos once used to resolve smaller simpler problems to solve larger, more complex issues. Although these methods repeatedly fail, like a swimmer caught in an undertow, we stubbornly pursue variations of the same failed solutions decade after decade.” 

2. Irrational Opposition.

“Irrational opposition occurs when the act of rejecting, criticizing, suppressing, ignoring, misrepresenting, marginalizing, and resisting rational solutions becomes the accepted norm.” 

3. The Personalization of Blame.

“Throughout history civilizations have had a clear pattern of foisting the responsibility for complex problems onto the shoulders of individuals whenever complex problems persist.”

4. Silo Thinking. “Silo thinking,” says Costa,

“is the compartmentalized thinking and behavior that prohibits the collaboration needed to address complex problems. Instead of encouraging cooperation between individuals and groups that share a common objective, silo thinking causes undermining, competition, and divisiveness.”

5. Extreme Economics.

“When simple principles in business, such as risk/reward and profit/loss, become the litmus test for determining the value of people and priorities, initiatives and institutions.”

            While many have hoped, and continue to hope, that with enough education and insight we can avoid the collapse that so many previous civilizations have experienced, there is increasing recognition that we have passed the point of no return. Humans have so disrupted many of our human life-support systems that collapse is inevitable.

            The world-renowned biologist E.O. Wilson summarizes the human dilemma.

“The real problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology. We’re a mixed-up, and in many ways, an archaic species in transition.”

            Although healthcare professionals and the general public may not be aware of future shock and diseases of change and complexity, we are all aware of problems of anxiety. In his book, Anxious: Using The Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, Joseph LeDoux says,

“Collectively fear and anxiety disorders are the most prevalent of all psychiatric problems in the United States, affecting about twenty  percent of the population with an associated economic cost estimated to exceed $40 billion annually.”

            Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, author of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind, says,

“Anxiety is everywhere. It always has been. But in the last several years, it has come to dominate our lives in a way that it perhaps never has.”

            Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a professor of neural science and psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University and is a celebrated international authority on neuroplasticity. In her book, Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion, she says,

“We live in an age of anxiety. Like an omnipresent, noxious odor we’ve grown used to, anxiety has become a constant condition, a fact of life on this planet. From global pandemics to crashing economies, to intense, daily family challenges, we have plenty of justifiable reasons to feel anxious.”

            Clearly healthcare professionals are not only not immune to these problems, but we may actually be at higher risk because of who we are, where and how we work, and are feelings of professional responsibility to help those in need. We may need special support communities to help to keep ourselves sane so that we can help others.

            In her powerful and hopeful book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, and Restoring Sanity, cultural pathfinder and author Margaret Wheatley, says,

“My aspiration is for you to see clearly so that you may act wisely. If we don’t know where we are, if we don’t know what to prepare for, then any path we choose will keep us wandering in the wilderness, increasingly desperate, increasingly lost.”

            As someone who has been working as a healthcare professional for more than fifty years, I have come to realize that we will continue to undermine our own health if we act like “lone rangers” fighting to change things on our own. We either become as dysfunctional as the systems we are trying to change or our own mental, emotional, and relational health is compromised.

Margaret Wheately has an answer that I have found to be workable and effective.

“As leaders dedicated to serving the causes and people we treasure, confronted by this unrelenting tsunami, what are we to do?, says Wheatley. My answer to this is also stated with full confidence: We need to restore sanity by awakening the human spirit. We can only achieve this if we undertake the most challenging and meaningful work of our leader lives: creating Islands of Sanity.”

She goes on to say,

“An Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people’s commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people’s innate generosity, creativity, and kindness.”

In her new book, Restoring Sanity: Practices to Awaken Generosity, Creativity & Kindness in Ourselves and Our Organizations, she offers guidance and practical wisdom for creating and sustaining Islands of Sanity. I created my own Island of Sanity in 1979 when I joined a men’s group. We began as seven guys who made a commitment to support each other so we could do the work we knew was important in the world while staying sane. I wrote about our experiences in an article “’Til Death Do Us Part: The Life and Times of My 45-Year-Old Men’s Group.”

If you would like to learn more about my books, training programs, and current thinking, you can contact me at MenAlive.com.  

The post Healer Heal Thyself: Why Health Care Professionals Are Becoming Stressed, Depressed, and Suicidal appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 2: The Future of Gender-Specific Healthcare

            In Part 1, I discussed some of my own challenges as a health care professional who has been working in the field for more than fifty years. I also described the challenges facing health care providers today and why so many are leaving the profession. I introduced you to the importance of the emerging field of Gender-Specific Medicine and its founder, Dr. Marianne J. Legato.

I recently interviewed Dr. Legato for my podcast at MenAlive. She discussed the evolution of the field of gender-specific medicine, which began with a focus on women’s unmet medical needs and now is increasingly addressing men’s health needs. She says,

“The premature death of men is the most important—and neglected—health issue of our time.”

            For Dr. Legato, her passion for gender-specific medicine is personal, not just professional.

“My physician father illustrated many of the biological and societal hazards of being male. My mother outlived him by a decade, mourning his absence every day.”

In her book, Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan, she says,

“My father’s lifestyle was not conducive to a long and healthy life. He had what I came to consider the quintessentially male nature:

He worked with an amazing tenacity at his vocation and he never asked anyone for help or complained about the burdens it placed on him. He gook risks that were unnecessary, asked no one for advice or counsel, smoked three packs of Philip Morris cigarettes a day, ate huge amounts of pasta, oiled vegetables, and rich Italian pastries, and frequently finished his long day with a generous helping of Scotch on the rocks in one of the beautifully faceted crystal glasses he favored.”

            She concludes,

“It all took a toll. He was often despondent and had outbursts of temper that were the result of what I now think was chronic depression. I think he would have considered the idea of confiding any of his issues to a psychiatrist, much less taking medications for his all-too-frequent sieges of depression, unthinkable.”

            That could well have been my story and I feel grateful that I was able to break out of my denial. My wife helped, but so did another health care provider, Kay Redfield Jamison. Dr. Jamison is one of the world’s leading experts on depression and bipolar disorder and wrote the definitive text. In her book, An Unquiet Mind: Memoir of Moods and Madness, she reveals her own struggles with mood disorders.

            When I read her story, particularly the following words describing her own condition, which exactly mirrored my own, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

            “Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief.”

            She ends with these words that still run through me many years after I have successfully completed treatment:

“You’re irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re ‘not at all like yourself but will be soon,’ but you know you won’t.”

            I feel blessed to have gotten the help I needed, even when I was resistant to receiving it. Things are changing, led my both men and women who recognize that men’s and women’s health issues cannot be separated and must be achieved together. One man who has been a leading voice and advocate for men and boys in the world is Gary Barker, founder of Promundo.

In a TED talk in October, 2023, “A Reframing Masculinity, Rooted in Empathy,” he says that violence in the world is a male problem, but it’s one that be changed.

“We are the most wired-to-care species on the planet. Our neurological systems, our hormonal systems, are wired to care, to nurture, to love, to form attachments with others. But it’s not automatic. If you don’t use it, if you close it off, if you hide, you don’t get good at it. But if you try and if you practice and if you learn it, you do get good at it. Even the man who seems most cut off from the world can learn it.”

            Another man who is breaking new ground is Richard V. Reeves. I was sent an advance copy of his book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.

            I interviewed Reeves and learned that he has had a long interest in gender-specific healing and men’s health.

“I have been worrying about boys and men for 25 years,”

he says.

“It became clear to me that the problems of boys and men are structural in nature, rather than individual; but are rarely treated as such. The problem with men is typically framed as a problem of men. It is men who must be fixed, one man or boy at a time. This individualist approach is wrong.”

            Reeves recently founded the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM).

“Too many boys and men are struggling – at school, at work, and in their families and communities,”

says Reeves.

“The American Institute for Boys & Men is the first national organization committed to objective research and policy development to enhance the wellbeing of boys and men.

            In a recent article posted by AIBM, “Where Are the Men: Male Representation in Social Work and Psychology,” they say,

“Mental health needs are pervasive among men, yet the share of men meeting those needs in mental health professions is low and declining. Key Takeaways include:

• Men account for only 18% of social workers and 20% of psychologists. The shortage of men is particularly severe in subfields like child and school psychology.

• The representation of men in these mental health professions has halved in recent decades, down from a male share of 38% in social work and 68% in psychology in 1968 [the year I graduated from U.C. Berkeley].

• This downward trend looks set to continue: the male share of recipients of master’s degrees and above is 20% in psychology and 12% in social work, and men in psychology are on average older than women.

• Men are less likely to seek mental health support: in 2022, 27% of women spoke to a mental health professional or took medication for anxiety or depression compared to only 16% of men.”

We need more male health care professionals and we need more men who are trained in understanding gender-specific medicine and health care. I will be offering a series of courses later this year to address these needs. In a recent article “Calling All Men: Are You Ready to Get Healthy in Body, Mind, and Spirit in 2024?,” I describe what I will be offering.

If you’re interested in learning more, drop me an email to Jed@Menalive.com. Put “Men’s Courses” in the subject line.

To read more articles like these, please consider subscribing to my free newsletter.

In Part 3 of the series, I will discuss additional healing tools that healthcare professionals need to know about in order to improve their own health and wellbeing as well as those we serve.

The post Healer Heal Thyself: Why Health Care Professionals Are Becoming Stressed, Depressed, and Suicidal appeared first on MenAlive.

I have been providing mental health services to men, women, and families since 1968. Like many mental healthcare providers, my desire to help others began in my family. When I was five years old, my mid-life father took an overdose of sleeping pills. He had become increasingly depressed because he couldn’t make a living during what he loved to do to support his family.

            Though he didn’t die, our lives were never the same. He was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital, north of where we lived in Los Angeles. The treatment available then was far worse than it is today. He didn’t get better. His mental health deteriorated, but the doctors told our family that he just needed more “treatment.”

            I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to prevent other families from suffering as we had. I graduated from college and was accepted into medical school in 1965. I thought I wanted to become a psychiatrist. On a conscious level, I wanted to help others like my father. On a deeper level I was terrified that I would become mentally ill and end up being locked up like my dad. I thought if I could get fully educated about mental health, I could keep mental illness from coming into my life.

            Medical school at the time felt much too narrow to address all the inter-related physical, mental, emotional, relational, social, and spiritual problems that I knew someone with mental illness must address. I soon transferred from U.C. San Francisco Medical School to U.C. Berkeley School of Social Welfare where a wider range of problems were addressed and I joined a program that taught a more varied arsenal of interventions.

            Like most new graduates with a professional degree, I began working in various healthcare settings. I began working at the mental hospital where I had done my most recent field placement, later I spent several years working in various settings helping people recover from a variety of addictions.

            Over the last forty years I have worked in the emerging field of Gender-Specific Medicine where I have specialized in helping men and their families. Following the publication of my first book Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man in 1983, I launched MenAlive. I offer a variety of resources to help men and their families to live fully, love deeply, and make a positive difference in the world.

            In weekly articles I share what I’ve learned from my professional practice over the last fifty-plus years. I also am open about what I have learned from addressing my own mental health issues. I call myself a “two-hatter.” One hat is the one I wear when I work with clients who come to me for help. The other hat is the one I wear when I am getting help with my own mental health challenges.

I wrote about my mental health journey in several my books including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions, Stress Relief for Men, and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression.

I also write a weekly newsletter where I share articles that can help others. In one, “Being Bipolar: Living in a World of Fire and Ice,” I describe my own healing journey with mental illness.

“Most people don’t know I’m bipolar,”

I say in the article.

“After  years of loving kindness shown to me by my wife, therapy with a caring and skilling therapist, and medications to help keep me in balance, my illness is in remission.”

As I’ve learned over the years, both as a provider of mental health services and one seeking information and help to treat my own problems, finding good resources and help is not easy.

Let’s face it, we are living in crazy times, where the whole world seems angry, anxious, stressed, and depressed and things are getting worse. In 2018 the American Psychological Association surveyed a thousand U.S. adults about their sources and levels of anxiety. The APA found that 39% of Americans reported being more anxious than they were in 2017, and an equal amount (39%) had the same level of anxiety as the previous year. That’s nearly 80% of the population experiencing anxiety.

What are people most concerned about? The APA survey reported that:

• 68% worried about health and safety.

• 67% reported finances as their source of anxiety.

• 56% were stressed about our political system and elections.

The APA also found that 63% of Americans felt that the future of the nation was a large source of stress. 59% checked the box that “the United States is at the lowest point they can remember in history.”

Clearly with statistics like these, we can no longer view “mental illness” as simply a problem of individuals. We are experiencing a problem of whole systems collapsing and we need to develop new systems to bring about repair. My colleague, Margaret J. Wheatley, author of the book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership says,

“Our task is to create Islands of Sanity, both internally and within our sphere of influence, where sanity prevails, where people can recall and practice the best human qualities of generosity, caring, creativity, and community.”

WebShrink: Bringing Mental Health Seekers and Mental Health Providers Together

            I first learned about Webshrink when I received an email from Dr. Edward Bilotti. It began,

“Dear Jed, we need your help.”

            As you know from reading thus far, I’m all about helping others. Dr. Bilotti went on to say:

            “When it comes to mental health, the internet can be a crowded and confusing place for those seeking answers. People need a place where they’ll find appropriate information and help. They need a safe place where the important work we do as mental health professionals is honored, and topics are presented respectfully.

            “That’s why I founded Webshrink. The name might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the topic couldn’t be more serious. Webshrink’s mission is to:

•  Be the go-to place for struggling individuals and their loved ones as well as professionals like you.

• Provide accurate, trustworthy information that is easy to understand, fact-checked, and never pop-psychology-based.

• Promote hope and positivity by giving voice to those who want to share their stories.

• Make it easy and safe for clients and professionals to connect and communicate online.”

When I finished reading Dr. Bilotti’s letter I knew I needed to learn more. I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in doing an interview for my blog. He agreed and you can watch the full interview here.

After talking to him in person, I realized he is for real. He’s a man on a mission and the mission is one that is near and dear to my heart and soul. If you’re a  health care provider, you will find Dr. Bilotti to be a kindred spirit who is in the business of helping other health care providers like yourself. If you are a seeker of health care and want to get the latest, most accurate, information that can help you make good decisions about your health, you will also find a caring community at Webshrink. If you are a “two-hatter” like me, you will find much that will interest and excite you.

Being a health care provider I was interested in some of the things Webshrink is planning to offer us. Dr. Bilotti detailed a few new things planned for later this year:

• HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform designed for mental health.

• A complete, searchable medication database.

• Secure, private messaging between therapists and clients.

• Online scheduling.

• More resources and clinical tools for therapists.

I decided to join and hope you’ll consider joining as well. Here are the main reasons I think Webshrink is a community worth joining:

• I believe in the mission to create a community of mental health Seekers and Providers.

• I believe in the man behind the mission, Dr. Ed. Bilotti.

• The cost is extremely reasonable: $4/month, $40/year, $100/Lifetime (and you get a free month to try it out. Can’t beat that).

• Plus, Dr. Bilotti is offering all providers a $25 gift certificate to Amazon if you join by March 30, 2024. (He told me he wants to encourage people to buy one of my books, but you can spend it anyway you want.)

If you want to get more information and consider joining this worthwhile movement you can learn about listing your practice here.

And if you want to see what a listing looks like you can check out my own at https://tinyurl.com/WebshrinkDrJed.

Plus, if you liked this article and would like to get a free E-Copy of my latest book Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity, send an email to: Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Webshrink book offer” in the subject line. It is my 17^th book and some say, it’s my best.

The post The Future of Mental Health: Bringing Together Health Seekers and Providers appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 1

I have been a health care professional for more than fifty years. During that time I have risen in my profession and helped thousands of men and women to live fully, love deeply, and make a positive difference in the world. I have also been stressed, depressed, and suicidal during much of my professional life. I’m  not alone. According to Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University,

“Health care workers compared with non-healthcare workers have greater risks for mental health problems and long-term work absences due to mental disorders, and are at increased risk of suicide, compared with workers in other fields.”

            It took me a long time to recognize and accept my own problems and to get the help I needed. Like many health professionals I thought I could save the world. I put the needs of my clients ahead of my own and suffered as a result. I also believed that most health problems were gender neutral, with the same treatment applicable for males and females.

            That changed for me when our son went into treatment for his alcohol and drug problems. My wife and I were invited to come visit him during family week. As part of the education we received about addictions and the underlying causes, all the family members were given a standard depression questionnaire. Most experts agreed that people who suffered from addictions, as well as family members, often suffered from depression.

            My wife, Carlin, scored high on the depression scale (indicating that she likely had some degree of depression). I scored low, indicating that I didn’t. When we returned home she saw a doctor, received a more in-depth examination, which verified the findings. She started on medications and counseling and things improved greatly in her life as well as mine.

            Two months into her own therapy she suggested that I might also be suffering from depression. “I don’t think so,” I told her. “Remember, you are the one that scored high on the test. I scored low.”

            “Maybe so,” she told me. “But tests don’t always tell the whole story. I still think you could use some help.”

            I disagreed and got busy doing my work seeing clients, but my stress and irritability increased. Things got worse between us and I finally agreed to see someone, hoping it would put her mind at ease. Instead the therapist agreed with her, though my symptoms were different than hers, my depression was real, I was told. 

Carlin shared some of her frustrations with the therapist.

“Jed has rapid mood changes. He’s angry, accusing, argumentative and blaming one moment. The next he’s buying me flowers, cards, and love notes. He can be happy and the life of the party one moment, then become irritable, anxious, and depressed the next minute.”

            I spent seven years in treatment which included medications, in addition to psychotherapy. Things began to improve and many lifelong issues that I had avoided were dealt with and resolved. I wrote two books about what I learned, The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationships from The Irritable Male Syndrome.

            In the process, I heightened my awareness about differences between men and women and why understanding gender different are important for clinicians and clients. According to Marianne J. Legato, MD, Founder of the Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine,

“Until now, we’ve acted as though men and women were essentially identical except for the differences in their reproductive function. In fact, information we’ve been gathering over the past ten years tells us that this is anything but true, and that everywhere we look, the two sexes are startingly and unexpectedly different not only in their normal function but in the ways they experience illness.”

            I delved more deeply into the science of gender-specific medicine and learned that new information on genetic differences between males and females were also important to our understanding. David C. Page, M.D., is professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the Whitehead Institute, where he has a laboratory devoted to the study of the Y-chromosome.

            “There are ten trillion cells in the human body and every one of them is sex specific,”

says Dr. Page.

“We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome, but men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease. A great deal of the research going on today which seeks to understand the causes and treatments for disease is failing to account for this most fundamental difference between men and women. The study of disease is flawed.”

            Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician, author, and expert in physician suicide prevention. In her book, Physician Suicide Letters Answered, she says,

“I’ve been a doctor for twenty years. I’ve not lost a single patient to suicide. I’ve lost only colleagues, friends, lovers–ALL male physicians–to suicide. Why?”

Males are not the only ones who die by suicide, but we are much more likely to die. Dr. Wible details the reasons that so many doctors and other healthcare professionals die by suicide including the following:

• Our greatest joy is the relationship with our patients.
• Doctoring is more than a job; it’s a calling, an identity.
• With so much need, we often put the needs of others ahead of our own.
• Assembly-line medicine undermines the patient-physician relationship.
• Most practitioners are burned out, overworked, or exhausted.
• Workaholics are admired in medicine and other healthcare professions.
• Many of us function in survival mode and our personal and family lives suffer.
• We’re not supposed to make mistakes.
• Caring for sick people can make us sick if we don’t take care of ourselves.
• Seeing too much pain and not enough joy is unhealthy.
• The reductionist medical model is dehumanizing for patients and providers.
• We are bullied by insurance companies, employers, and patients.
• Patients and the public see us as superhuman and we often forget that we have problems just like the people we treat.
• We don’t take very good care of themselves or each other.
• We don’t acknowledge the reality that we are at high risk of overwork, overwhelm, breakdown, and self-harm.

            There are many problems with our healthcare system. Stephen C. Schimpff, M.D, is one of the world’s foremost experts on health care. He says,

“The nation leads the world in spending for medical care but lags in quality because it lacks a health care system.“

Instead, he says, the United States has a “sick care” system. It is one of the reasons that many doctors and other health professionals are leaving the field, just at a time when they are needed the most.

            More than 145,200 clinicians exited the healthcare workforce in 2021 and 2022 with physicians—in particular internal medicine and family practice doctors—at the head of the line, according to a newly updated industry report from Definitive Healthcare. Beyond the physician population, 2021 and 2022 also had about 34,800 nurse practitioners, 15,300 physical therapists, 13,700 physician assistants and 10,000 licensed clinical social workers leave the workforce.

We need more male health care professionals and we need more men who are trained in understanding gender-specific medicine and health care. I will be offering a series of courses later this year to address these needs. In a recent article “Calling All Men: Are You Ready to Get Healthy in Body, Mind, and Spirit in 2024?,” I summarize the main topics.  

If you’re interested in learning more, drop me an email to Jed@Menalive.com. Put “Men’s Courses” in the subject line.

To read more articles like these, please consider subscribing to my free newsletter.

In Part 2 of this series I will continue to explore these issues.

The post Healer Heal Thyself: Why Health Care Professionals Are Becoming Stressed, Depressed, and Suicidal appeared first on MenAlive.