Breaking the Silence: Why Men's Mental Health Needs More Attention
A note to readers: This blog includes discussions of suicide and related emotional challenges. If you're struggling or feel overwhelmed, please know you're not alone. Support is available. If you’re seeking mental health resources, please refer to the list at the end of this post.
The Realities and Importance of Men’s Mental Health
“The problem with mental illness is it’s invisible. But it’s not imaginary” – Matt Haig [1].
While conversations and awareness about mental health are becoming more common, men are still disproportionately left out of the narrative – or pressured to stay quiet. In Canada, men account for nearly 80% of all deaths by suicide [2], with male suicide rates roughly three times that of females in 2022 [3]. For Indigenous and LGBTQ+ individuals, the risk is even higher, as mental health symptoms may be heightened by systemic discrimination, marginalization, and social exclusion [4].
These alarming numbers are further compounded by the fact that men are less likely to seek help - often due to social expectations around self-reliance and emotional restraint. Depression in men can also present differently, sometimes masked by anger, irritability, substance use, or social withdrawal – behaviours often mislabeled as character flaws rather than symptoms of psychological suffering – making it harder to identify and treat these mental health challenges in men [2]. In this blog, we’ll explore the barriers and stigma that men often face in seeking care, as well as the personal story of Kyle - whose journey sheds light on both the urgency of the issue and the hope that comes with being heard.
Notable Barriers for Seeking Help
So what gets in the way of seeking help? Unfortunately, help-seeking barriers are deeply rooted in gendered expectations. Many men report feeling like they can’t talk about their struggles without appearing weak [5]. Traits like independence and emotional restraint are often praised in traditional masculinity, leaving little space for vulnerability or emotional expression. In addition to being less likely to seek help, men often face further barriers within the healthcare system itself – such as a lack of male-focused spaces, limited mental health literacy, and even gender bias in clinical encounters contribute – contributing to a cycle where men’s suffering is not just internalized, but also institutionally overlooked [6].
Kyle Moore’s Story: Lived Experience with Mental Health Challenges
When I reflect on my lived experience, it can sound hyperbolic to say that some of my earliest memories are of mental distress – it’s been a part of my life, a character in my story, since the very beginning. I remember the panic of my parents dropping me off at school, how scared I was when the lights went out, feeling lost and unsafe and unsure if I, or the people I loved, would survive the night. Even as a child, I was acutely aware of the feelings of stress and panic that were a part of my day-to-day life. I couldn’t watch the news or movies with real actors because I would see suffering and experience dread, as if it were happening to my life. “What if our house gets broken into?” “What if my mom and dad get killed?” “What if my sister is abducted?” I believed that everything I saw was bound to happen to me and the people I cared the most about. This feeling was one of isolation. It wasn’t until my late teens that I was given the language that I could use to articulate the panic that had manipulated my behaviour and defined my outlook since childhood: Anxiety and OCD.
Growing up, I had a picture-perfect childhood: two loving parents with steady jobs, a great little sister, lots of land and nature to play in, good friends and good (physical) health. This white picket fence dream only fortified my sense of sickness or brokenness. I had this incredible environment around me but I felt like it was a fluke, like it couldn't be trusted or that I, with all of my pain and fear, didn’t belong or deserve this safety. My parents did what they could – acknowledging that I was anxious, and that was ok. They would let me sleep in their room or leave lights on at night, but I don’t think they fully understood just how deep the pain went. They didn’t have the language or education to talk to me about it, and I didn’t have the language or education to express the help I needed. This was a constant theme growing up; while there were multiple people in my life who created safe and supportive spaces, as a boy growing up in rural New Brunswick, I was also surrounded by a culture that told my peers and I to suck it up, “be a man” and “don’t be a pussy”.
I felt this constant hum, a pervasive anxious energy and hatred of the “broken” person I believed I was, for the better part of 17 years. Eventually, I found myself faced with the reality that I couldn't continue to exist this way. I decided to finally stop the pain and was going to die by suicide. However, as I went to carry out my plan, my self hatred reached its peak. I became convinced that I was so bad, so broken, so evil,that I didn’t even deserve to die. I believed that continuing to exist was punishment for the bad person I was. I stayed at rock bottom, continuing the daily torture that I believed I deserved for 2 more years.
During this time, I graduated with over 10k in scholarships, captained my school's basketball team and played volleyball and football, was a prominent member of our school's drama club, and worked multiple part-time jobs in my community. I became very good at putting on a mask that I thought would fool the people around me. I played a character that I thought my family and friends and community deserved – the charismatic, optimistic, kind young man who had a bright future ahead of him. I didn’t know how to feel or show love, but I knew they deserved it, and this was the closest thing I could think would allow me to show it. I was numb. I had wonderful moments, but I was numb.
I then got accepted to my dream school to pursue one of the few things in my life that brought some relief from the anxiety: sports. I was going to attend Ryerson University (now TMU) for their acclaimed sports media program. I thought the change of scenery and focus on something that I enjoyed might help. But the thing about mental health is, ignoring it won’t make it better. I continued to suppress my pain and emotions, worrying that I would lose value and the new identity I had built if I were to confront the demons that had lived with me since childhood. However, as I balanced a full course load and multiple jobs/internships, I found myself staring down another suicide crisis moment. This time, as I went to put the plan to end my life into action, I was faced with this moment of clarity, nothing else mattered except being alive or being dead. It was simple and quiet. And in this quiet, for the first time in my life, I remember thinking “I feel all this pain so extremely, but that contradicts the idea that I can’t feel anything like I thought. Pain, fear, sadness, despair are all extreme feelings, and if I can feel things extremely, that must mean I’m not as broken as I thought. If I can experience these extreme negative emotions, maybe I can also experience extreme happiness, or love, or compassion.” It was enough of a light in the darkness that I was able to, in that moment of clarity, hold onto and explore it… I had nothing else to lose. That was the day I decided to go and talk with someone from my school's counselling department, and it was also the day I decided to use my media degree to share my story and see if it resonated with anyone else. I figured if the world turned its back on me, if the stigma I had believed to be gospel was true and my family and friends turned me away – disgusted and embarrassed — then I would be no worse off than I was now. So I might as well try.
In my first therapy session, I took that “nothing can get worse” attitude with me, and when the counsellor asked me what was going on, I opened up for the first time in my life. I told her about the anxiety, I told her about the intrusive thoughts of harm and assault that had plagued my childhood, I shared my feelings of inadequacy and my self-hatred. I probably talked for 56 minutes of our hour together. After I was finished and the reservoir had run dry, my counsellor sat in silence for what felt like another 56 minutes. I thought, “Here we go, she’s going to confirm everything I’ve ever felt about myself. She’s going to tell me I’m messed up and unlovable and broken, and she’s going to be afraid of the monster that I am.” She leaned forward and looked at me and said, “Kyle, that sounds really hard.” Cue the waterworks. The floodgates were opened, and I felt catharsis, a moment of true relief. I hadn’t been rejected like I thought I would be; I was acknowledged and shown empathy, and it changed my life.
I soon started a mental health podcast, Life’s a Wreck, where I shared my experiences living with mental illness. After sharing the first episode, I had my parents and some friends reach out, expressing their support and sharing messages of love and desires to help. I was so convinced that I was unworthy of being loved that I never gave myself the opportunity to be loved, to accept it. While I did have some people who reached out saying, “men shouldn't have these conversations,” those messages were drowned out by the outpouring of support from the people closest to me. What’s meant the most is having older men who have lived in a similar silence and stifled by stigma for so long, share that my work showed them that they could open up about their struggles too. I vividly remember one of my former football teammates – one of the most manly, tough, gritty SOBs I’ve ever met – privately reaching out and sharing that after hearing me talk about my experience in therapy, he was going to talk to a counsellor too.
I continued going to therapy, producing my podcast, and I even started taking medication for my mental health. I quickly started to experience some of life’s joys and started to rebuild the parts of myself that had been lost for so long. It wasn’t long before I was able to say that I didn’t hate myself. And a few months after that, I could even say that I loved the man that I was becoming. I started to double down on my mental health advocacy, especially for men growing up in rural communities. I saw firsthand the power that one moment of connection can have. I think one of the things that has propelled my advocacy work forward is that it’s not hard. Frankly, it’s quite easy. All it takes is one moment of curiosity and empathy, one moment of recognizing the hardships that a man might be experiencing, one moment to say “me too,” one moment to let a man know that his value is not tied to suffering or to silence but that he himself as an individual is a value to your life and those around him. One moment to let him know that you’ll never think less of him for asking for help. That’s all it takes to change a life.
My experiences, both through years of suffering from my mental illness and the subsequent years of putting the pieces back together and advocating for better mental health for all, have taught me a few lessons about men’s mental health that I’m fortunate to be able to work with the WellIntel team to share with all of you:
For Men:
Try to identify whose voice you hear when you think of yourself as lesser for struggling with your mental health. Stigma is learned, so try and remember who your teacher was. Was it a family member? Your friends growing up? A coach? A romantic partner? Once you have an idea of who perceived you through the lens of stigma and perpetuated it onto you, apply empathy and curiosity to that person. Ask yourself things like “where would they have learned these “rules”? Why would they feel the need to put these labels on me? Do their actions come from a place of security or insecurity? Understanding that stigma is not a set of laws or truths – but rather, is often a reflection of the pain that someone else has likely endured and the rules they’ve adopted to fit in – can create some distance between you and the stigma they tried to pass on to you.
Hurting others will not make the pain go away. Some men will lash out with anger or malice as a way to feel powerful or in control, but this is an illusion. We are responsible for the pain we feel, whether we like it or not. It is our responsibility to manage and reduce this pain without transmitting it to others. So many of us have been taught that the only way we’ll be heard or valued is if we show up with ‘strength,’ and that strength is often synonymous with violence. This mindset is misguided and often one that will isolate rather than protect us. It’s not an easy thing to admit, but even if our pain was brought on by an external source, it is up to us to heal.
You deserve help. You deserve to ask for help and you deserve to receive it. One of the most powerful ways we can be role models for the young men in our lives is by showing them that it is ok to be vulnerable and to ask for help when needed.
Make sure the men in your life know that you care about them. This is one of my favourite ones and I regularly tell the men in my life that I love them. Too many men feel that showing signs of brotherhood and affection is a sign of weakness or that they aren’t masculine, and thus will be ostracized. But I believe that some of our most powerful healing comes from expressing love and compassion for the other men in our lives.
For those who have men they love:
Examine your own biases. My parents always told me “think before you speak,” and, although I think sometimes we simply need to let our words come from somewhere other than our heads, I believe this is great advice when providing support. If a man in your life finds the courage to open up to you, examine your internal reaction before responding. Is there a pinch of anger, pity, or are you uncomfortable? These reactions may be a sign of our biases or exposure to stigma, and it’s our responsibility to work through these uncomfortable sensations in the moment to best show up for the men we love.
Let boys cry. We are not born men, we become them. We are born boys and it is during boyhood when the intolerance of emotions, the “suck it up” the “stop your crying, boys don’t cry” is first experienced. Better boys means better men. Protect the emotional agency of the boys in your life and let them cry.
It’s not about fixing, it’s about safety. When I walked out of that university therapist's office, I wasn’t healed, but my life was indeed changed. I’m still navigating mental wellness and experiencing anxiety and intrusive thoughts, but what changed my life was the words “that sounds really hard.” As a society, we’re obsessed with fixing, but when it comes to mental health we need to focus on creating a space that is safe for someone to grapple with the lows and express themselves freely. Focus on building an environment of safety. Bonus tip - curiosity and empathy are the magic combination for helping create that space.
A Final Note from WellIntel
As Kyle’s story shows, support often begins with a simple conversation. But creating space for that conversation requires more than awareness — it calls for intentional action. By fostering environments rooted in safety, empathy, and connection, we can take crucial steps toward reducing stigma and encouraging open dialogue about men’s mental health. This includes rethinking how we talk about masculinity. When help-seeking is reframed as a proactive act of strength, not weakness, men are more likely to reach out; the more we normalize open, judgment-free conversations about mental health, the easier it becomes for others to speak, to listen, and to heal.
Resources:
If you or someone you know is navigating challenges with mental health, you’re not alone, and support is available. You can find Kyle’s Life’s a Wreck podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Below are also some of Canada's leading resources dedicated to supporting men in their mental wellness journeys. These organizations offer a range of tools, from self-assessment and educational materials, to professional counseling and community support.
The MindFit Toolkit by the Canadian Men’s Health Foundation (CMHF) is a free, online resource designed to help men manage stress, anxiety, and depression. It includes self-assessment tools, expert advice, and access to virtual counseling sessions through TELUS Health MyCare. Notably, men without extended health coverage may still be eligible for up to three free virtual counseling sessions.
HeadsUpGuys is an evidence-based program from the University of British Columbia that provides practical tips, tools, and information to support men in their fight against depression. The platform offers self-check tools, strategies for managing depression, and a therapist directory to connect men with professional help.
Man Therapy is an online resource that uses humor to encourage men to talk about mental health, in addition to providing tools and resources to address issues like depression and anxiety.
PsychologyToday.com: A database of Canadian therapists so that you can find a therapist that matches your location, mental health concerns, budget, and more.
If you're in crisis or need immediate support, there are confidential, 24/7 services available across Canada. These resources are designed to provide assistance without judgment, ensuring you have access to help whenever you need it:
Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call or text 9-8-8 anytime for free, confidential support. This service is bilingual, trauma-informed, and available to anyone in Canada.
Talk Suicide Canada: Call 1-833-456-4566 or text 45645 (available 4 p.m. to midnight ET) for support from trained responders.
Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention: Visit suicideprevention.ca for more information and resources.
Written by:
Kyle Moore (BA), Head of Mental Health at League of Innovators
Ethan Warchol (BSc.), WellIntel Volunteer
Rachel Mallinson (BSc.), WellIntel Coordinator
References:
[1] Haig, M. (2015). Reasons to stay alive. Canongate Books.
[2] Bilsker, D., Fogarty, A. S., & Wakefield, M. A. (2018). Critical issues in men’s mental health. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 63(9), 590-596.
[3] Public Health Agency of Canada. Suicide, self-harm and suicide-related behaviours in Canada: Suicide mortality. Ottawa: Public Health Agency of Canada; 2025-01-17. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/mental-health/suicide-self-harm/suicide-mortality.html
[4] Mental Health Commission of Canada. (2022). Men’s mental health and suicide in Canada: Key takeaways. https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/resource/mens-mental-health-and-suicide-in-canada-key-takeaways
[5] Vickery, A. (2021). Men’s help-seeking for distress: Navigating varied pathways and practices. Frontiers in sociology, 6, 724843.
[6] Affleck, W., Carmichael, V., & Whitley, R. (2018). Men’s mental health: Social determinants and implications for services. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 63(9), 581-589.