What Men Actually Need
Not therapy memes. Not "just open up." Something deeper and more honest about the quiet crisis happening right in front of us.
I’d rather wake up in the night to listen to my bro(s) rant or complain than hear they took their own lives.
Pressure is real o…
But this is not one of those write-ups to just point out that men have needs, but to clarify what those needs are.
Every June, the internet reminds us that men have mental health. (At least for 4 out of 52 weeks… Thank you.)
There’s a week of blue ribbons and a handful of podcasts dropping “vulnerable conversations” (I am not even going to lie, it icks me; collect the mics, cos most of them do not care)
A few brands are posting statistics with sad-looking stock photos. Then July arrives, and we collectively move on.
Which is a shame.
Because the data is genuinely alarming, the conversation we keep having about it might be part of the problem.
3–4×
Men die by suicide more than women in most countries
1 in 8
Men globally have a diagnosable mental health condition
~40%
Men who never speak to anyone about their mental health
The gap between how much men suffer and how much men seek help is staggering.
And the default response is usually the same: men need to open up more. Which is true, but wildly incomplete. Like telling someone who hasn’t eaten in three days to “just eat”.
The instruction is correct. The framing misses everything.
“We’ve diagnosed the symptom - silence - without really asking what’s underneath it.”
So what do men actually need?
Not as a demographic category, but as human beings who’ve been socialised in a specific and often damaging way? Let’s be honest about it.
Permission to not be fine
The unspoken rule
Men learn early that being “not fine” is a burden to others. Admitting to struggle is weakness. That's the way you earn your place in a room: by being the steady one.
This isn’t biology; it’s a learned script, and it runs so deep that most men don’t know they’re performing it.
The issue isn’t just that men don’t talk about pain. It is that many men don’t even register it as pain. It shows up as irritability.
Overworking. Drinking. Grinding at the gym until something tears. The body keeps the score, as the saying goes, and men have gotten very good at misreading the bill.
(Sidebar: Brothers, let’s be guided. Drinking alcohol is not a better way to manage pain. That stuff sucks, yes, I know, bitter and hot; you cannot convince me otherwise, convince your internal organs.)
What men need is a cultural shift, not just an individual nudge. Not “be vulnerable”. But a world where a man saying “I’m not doing well” lands the same way it does when a woman or child says it with care, not alarm or pity or awkward silence.
Friendships with actual depth
The loneliness epidemic inside the loneliness epidemic
Research consistently shows that men’s social networks shrink dramatically after their mid-twenties. (Sadly, I am seeing this happen to my egbons – elder brothers for the foreign audience.)
By the time men hit their forties, many have one or two people they’d call in a crisis, and one of those is usually a romantic partner.
This is catastrophic, and we treat it like a personality quirk. “Oh, men just aren’t as social.” But men aren’t wired for isolation. They’re conditioned to treat friendship as a byproduct of activity: you become friends at work, at football, or at the bar rather than something you deliberately cultivate.
So when the activity disappears (you change jobs, the league ends, life gets busy), the friendship goes with it. What men need are friendships that can survive the removal of the shared context. That can handle a phone call that starts with something real.
“The activity was never the point. It was just a cover for connection, and most men never learned to drop the cover.”
Identity beyond performance
What happens when the role runs out
A huge portion of male identity gets attached to roles: provider, builder, protector, and expert. These aren’t inherently bad things to value.
But when identity is the role, any disruption to the role becomes an identity crisis.
Redundancy. Injury. Divorce. Retirement. A business failing. These events hit men harder than the numbers suggest because they’re not just losing a job or a relationship; they’re losing the story they told themselves about who they are.
I believe men need interior lives that aren’t purely contingent on output.
Some curiosity, some creativity, some sense of self that doesn’t require an audience or a result.
This sounds abstract, but it’s devastatingly practical; I dare claim it is the difference between a man who falls apart at 58 because he retired and one who finds the next chapter.
Healthcare they’ll actually use
The system needs to be designed with them in mind
Men are less likely to see a doctor, less likely to have a regular GP, less likely to disclose mental health symptoms and more likely to reach a point of crisis before any intervention happens.
Part of this is cultural conditioning. But a significant part of it is structural.
The way mental health services are often designed – sitting in a room, talking about feelings, showing up weekly, and so on does not necessarily fit how many men process or communicate.
That doesn’t mean men are broken. It means the model has gaps.
Walk-and-talk therapy. Gym-based mental health programmes. Peer support groups structured around doing something together. Men’s sheds.
These aren’t compromises; they’re legitimate access points that meet men where they actually are.
Proof they work; I go lie for you?
To be seen without being fixed
The difference between presence and problem-solving
There’s a cruel irony in how men are taught to respond to pain: with solutions.
So when a man is finally vulnerable enough to share something hard, the instinct from other men, especially, is to immediately move to fixing it. Which sends a subtle message: your feelings are a problem to be resolved, not an experience to be held.
What many men have never had and desperately need is someone who can just be there without rushing to make the discomfort go away.
A partner who asks, “Do you want me to listen or help you problem-solve?” before launching in. A friend who doesn’t flinch. A therapist who doesn’t pathologise normal grief or rage.
Being witnessed, without agenda, is a profound human need. Men have been taught to distrust it. Relearning it is some of the most important work a man can do.
So what now?
None of this is solved by a blue ribbon or a “check on your strong friend” tweet, though the intention behind those isn’t wrong.
The gap is between awareness and actual change in how we relate to the men in our lives.
If you’re a man reading this, you’re not fine because you’ve learned not to be anything else. That’s not strength. That’s a cage with good PR.
If you’re not, the men around you are probably carrying more than they’re saying. Not because they’re hiding it from you, but specifically because they’ve been hiding it from themselves for years.
You don’t have to fix anything. You just have to not look away.
June is the reminder. The work is the rest of the year.
Written for Men’s Mental Health Month. If you or someone you know is struggling, the International Association for Suicide Prevention maintains a directory of crisis centres at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
Much needed read. These all make sense now. Thank you.