Two peer-reviewed studies published in 2025 showed the same result from different perspectives: many of the obstacles men face when seeking support are built into how services are organised, presented, and delivered.
The first study, by Lok and Law, interviewed 21 men from Hong Kong aged 18–55 who had histories of mental distress, self-harm, and substance use. The second, by Seidler and colleagues at the Movember Institute of Men’s Health, conducted focus groups with 32 Australian men across different ages to explore what works — and what misses the mark — when they see a health or mental health practitioner.
Men’s Mental Health Support and the Gap Both Studies Expose
Both studies highlight the same practical points.
Men are more inclined to seek support when it tackles issues that matter most to them under pressure: staying functional, meeting responsibilities, maintaining agency, building trust, and noticing progress.
They are more likely to stay engaged with support when they feel that the person in front of them treats them like a human being rather than just a case to handle. That is not a small design preference; it is the difference between maintaining or abandoning support.
The Door Problem in Men’s Mental Health Support
Most conversations about men and mental health focus on getting men through the door. Why will they not come? What stops them from reaching out?
Lok and Law found that the answer is not apathy or weakness. It lies in the service’s design, including its structure, language, interaction pace, and whether men can see a clear path from first contact to meaningful progress.
The men in their study did not assess their distress against a clinical standard. Instead, they gauged it by their ability to function — to hold down a job, support a family, and continue in the role that defined their identity. When that ability declined, the internal reaction was rarely I need help. More often, it was I am failing.
This distinction matters because it reveals where engagement often begins. It seldom starts with symptom awareness alone or campaigns encouraging men to talk. Instead, it begins with a man’s feeling of whether support will help him stabilise what he perceives as slipping, rebuild what is under pressure, and regain some footing, or if it will simply reaffirm what he fears he is already losing.
This is why services centred on emotional disclosure as the main way of providing support can turn men away before they even start. Men seldom seek help by initially focusing on their feelings. They are more inclined to take action when their ability to meet responsibilities is impacted.
What the study also found is that the primary trigger for most men wasn’t personal suffering reaching a tipping point. Instead, it was someone else being impacted. A daughter was born. A marriage is breaking apart. A father watching his children adjust to his absence.
Many men first realise something is wrong when the effects begin to show in the people or roles they are responsible for. Even then, not all of them take action. Some still shut down, delay, minimise, or hope the problem will pass. But this is often the point where the problem becomes harder to deny. What is being recognised here isn’t emotional fluency in the usual sense. It is practical recognition: something is slipping, someone is being affected, and the cost is no longer contained within him alone.
The Room Problem in Men’s Mental Health Support
Seidler and colleagues identified a second failure point that the first paper does not fully address.
Why Men Leave Mental Health Support After They Arrive
Their paper reports an Australian therapy dropout rate of 44.8% among men who accessed mental health care. For men who strongly identified with traditional masculinity, the main reason for dropout was not cost, distance, or stigma; it was a lack of connection with the practitioner.
A recent Movember survey of 1,658 Australian men found that 67% had considered leaving — or had already left — a practitioner due to a lack of personal connection. More than a third of those who departed did not return at all.
The men in Seidler’s focus groups were specific about what that missing connection looked like. Not vague warmth. Not forced friendliness. Observable behaviour. A practitioner who listened first rather than rushing to type, asked one more question at the end of the appointment, and resisted the urge to categorise the problem before understanding the life surrounding it. A practitioner who was open about what was happening and why, and who treated the man in front of them as a whole person with a body, a history, relationships, obligations, and a context.
One participant explained it plainly. He described what it felt like to be seen as a body on an assembly line needing fixing — and contrasted that with how it felt when someone genuinely showed up for him.
The men were not asking for less professionalism. They were asking for more humanity alongside it.
What Seidler’s team discovered is worth saying outright. Men could pick up on genuine care within minutes. They could also notice when it was missing just as quickly. A practitioner typing while a man spoke. A question asked out of routine rather than real interest. A consultation that quickly moved through the presenting problem without once asking about the life behind it. Men observed all of this. And when they sensed its absence, they said what they thought needed to be said, then they left. Often for good.
The paper’s phrase is worth keeping as it is because it communicates something precise: “treat me delicately”. Not sentimentally. Not theatrically. Delicately — with care, accuracy, and respect for the fact that a man may be sitting there with very little room left to risk feeling mishandled.
Why These Two Studies Matter for Men’s Mental Health Support
It would be simple to read one paper as a study of help-seeking and the other as a study of bedside manner. That would overlook the deeper point.
Read together, these papers outline the complete failure chain. Men do not access services because they are not designed to align with how they interpret distress. They do not stay because many encounters still lack trust, dignity, and relationships. Fix one element without addressing the others, and the gap persists.
They also belong together because both challenge lazy ideas about masculinity. Lok and Law do not see masculinity as fixed or just toxic. They see it as something that can be reshaped. Seidler and colleagues do not claim that men must lose masculine traits before care can be effective. They advocate for gender-responsive care that understands how men present themselves, what they protect, and what encourages their engagement.
The cultural contexts differ, but the lesson in service design remains consistent. Men engage more effectively when support respects responsibility, competence, autonomy, and relationships. Masculinity, when engaged properly, is not a barrier; it can become part of the bridge.
What Effective Men’s Mental Health Support Must Provide
This is where the practical value of both papers becomes clear.
Lok and Law argue that services for men need three things.
- First, they need to engage men through purposes that go beyond feelings alone.
- Second, they need pragmatic steps with clear, observable, measurable outcomes.
- Third, they need to re-narrate destructive masculinity stories into forms that preserve agency and meaning rather than simply shaming men for having them.
Seidler and colleagues describe four outcomes of successful engagement.
- Men need help legitimising the relationship so trust can form.
- They need a safe space so disclosure becomes possible.
- They need to feel empowered through transparency, collaboration, and respect for autonomy. and
- They need care that treats the whole man through a biopsychosocial lens rather than reducing him to a symptom, diagnosis, or single event.
Place these findings side by side, and the picture becomes clearer. Effective support for men requires a meaningful reason to get involved, a structure they can follow, progress they can see, someone they can trust, and enough dignity in the process so they do not feel they must surrender themselves to be helped.
If you would like to read more on Men, Grief and the Australian Context, see:
Men’s Grief and Identity in Australia: Why Stigma Punishes
Male Grief in Australia: How Men Reclaim Themselves
What Happens When Men’s Mental Health Support Arrives Too Late
One of the most significant contributions in the Lok and Law paper is that their model depicts a downward spiral. A man experiences stress, loss, shame, or emotional pain. He avoids recognising it. He relies on alternative coping mechanisms — overworking, withdrawing, substances, self-harm, silence, or attempting to maintain control. His sense of competence begins to decline. As his sense of competence diminishes, avoidance becomes even more likely. The spiral tightens.
This matters because it explains why a man can look functional for a long time while actually deteriorating inside. He may still be going to work. He may still be paying the bills. He may still be speaking in a composed voice. From the outside, he can look intact. From the inside, the structure is weakening.
Lok and Law’s second diagram is equally important. It illustrates that the right kind of service can break that cycle and start rebuilding self-competence. That is the practical aim. Not just to get a man to disclose, and not merely to reduce symptoms generally, but to help him regain enough ground so he can function with more honesty, more capacity, and less hidden strain.
What This Means for Structured Mentoring for Men
How Structured Mentoring Can Support Men Through Transition
The 5R Compass™ starts with Regulate because a man cannot begin to reclaim, rebuild, reconnect, or recreate anything until he has some ground under him again. That is not a softer alternative to real work. It is the condition that makes real work possible.
The broader framework is based on a simple fact that these studies now confirm: men often handle major life changes — grief, loss of identity, relationship breakdown, career setbacks, fatherhood pressure, role exhaustion — by prioritising competence over emotion. That doesn’t mean emotion isn’t there; it just means the way in is different.
Lok and Law outline a competency-based theory of change. Seidler and colleagues detail the relational conditions that enable engagement: genuine connection, active listening, transparency, respect for autonomy, and care that considers the entire life rather than just the presenting issue.
Both describe what structured mentoring, done well, is designed to provide.
What that looks like in practice is a man who arrives not because he has decided he is broken, but because something he values is under pressure and he wants to do something about it. He works through a structured process with clear markers of progress. He is not asked to surrender his identity to access support. He is not pushed faster than trust allows. He is met where he is, given a framework he can use, and helped to find a sense of direction.
What Men’s Mental Health Support Means for Referrers
How Referrers Can Improve Support for Men Early
The men most at risk are often the ones who still look the most capable.
They might not show emotional language. They could exhibit sleep issues, irritability, overwork, flatness, relationship problems, indecision, withdrawal, or a decline in functioning, which they often dismiss as pressure. They tend to compare themselves to role performance rather than internal distress. By the time they acknowledge struggles, the strain has usually become well established.
The practical lesson is clear.
- First contact matters.
- Frame support around function, roles, and what is at risk.
- Make the process explicit.
- Show what happens next.
- Respect autonomy.
- Do not ask men to perform emotional openness as proof that they deserve help.
- Trust grows when the structure makes sense.
For many men, structured mentoring is not a lesser option than clinical care. It can serve as a vital bridge between silent decline and formal treatment, or as a helpful supplement when a man requires support with identity, direction, responsibility, and rebuilding daily life.
Limits in the Men’s Mental Health Support Research
These papers are helpful, but they do not provide a straightforward explanation that applies to every man or situation.
Lok and Law examined a small qualitative sample of Hong Kong men, many of whom were already linked to services. Seidler and colleagues used Australian focus groups to explore men’s experiences and expectations in healthcare encounters. Neither paper addresses every question. Neither should be overstated with claims they do not make.
What gives them weight is convergence. Different settings. Different methods. Same broad lesson. Men engage more when support is designed in ways that respect how they interpret distress, what they are trying to protect, and what allows trust to form.
Research does not build what men need. People do. But research that confirms the direction matters.
These two studies confirm the direction.
References
Lok, R. H. T., & Law, Y. W. (2025). Men’s mental health service engagement amidst the masculinity crisis: Towards a reconstruction of traditional masculinity. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, 8, 100596.
Seidler, Z. E., Sheldrake, M., Rice, S., Wilson, M. J., Benakovic, R., Fisher, K., & McGee, M. A. (2025). “Just treat me delicately”: A qualitative exploration of what works to engage Australian men in health care encounters. American Journal of Men’s Health.