A landmark report into the causes of male suicide has been released today, and highlights how men struggle differently to women, specifically towards mental health problems.

The research, carried out by the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and Huffington Post, released as part of the Building Modern Men campaign, identified that men could in fact suffer from depression in a way that even doctors may miss.

The latest Masculinity Audit reveals that men are not only less likely than women to open up to friends about being depressed, they are also more likely to exhibit risk taking behaviour, and feel more frustrated about some of life’s challenges such as losing a job.

Another important finding of the new research was that barely half of men who admitted to feeling very depressed, had told anyone about it – this is compared with 67% of women who did. This perfectly exemplifies the gender differences between men and women and how they react differently to challenges within their lives.

It establishes the gender differences in the use of language as a tool to communicate struggles with mental health, which could be a key cause of the UK’s rising male suicide rate.
 

Main findings:

 

• Four out of ten males feel they lack the qualities and abilities that partners look for in a man

• 61% of all respondents agree that men are stereotyped in the media

• Four in ten male respondents strongly agreed that women have unrealistic expectations of men

• Half of all male respondents had felt very depressed, but among men aged 25-34, the figure rises to two-thirds, listing: mental health, financial problems and relationship breakdowns, as the main reasons

• Men are less likely to have been diagnosed with common mental health disorders than women

• 31% of men surveyed feel pressure to be the main earner in families, compared to 19% of women feeling the same

• A quarter of men said losing their job make them feel less of a person while 17% of women said this would make them feel the same

• A total of 55% of men felt males were stereotyped negatively in the media