Men are dying. Not from war or disease, but from silence.
According to the CDC, men account for nearly 80% of all suicide deaths in the United States. We die by suicide at four times the rate of women. And yet, when people talk about mental health, they're usually not talking about us.
This isn't an accident. It's a systemic failure that starts with how we raise boys and continues through every "man up" and "don't be a baby" we hear throughout our lives.
The silence is killing us. Literally.
What I See in My Practice
I work with men every day who are struggling. Successful men. Men with families, careers, accomplishments that look impressive from the outside. And they're falling apart inside.
The pattern is almost always the same. They've spent years, sometimes decades, pushing down anything that felt like weakness. Sadness became anger. Fear became aggression. Loneliness became isolation.
By the time they reach out, they're exhausted from holding it all together. They don't even have the vocabulary to describe what they're feeling because they've never been allowed to feel it.
This is shadow work territory. The emotions you've been told aren't acceptable for men to feel don't disappear. They go underground. They run your life from the shadows, showing up as patterns you can't break, relationships that keep failing, and a persistent emptiness that success can't fill.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Here's what the data tells us:
- Men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women
- We're significantly less likely to be diagnosed with depression
- We're less likely to seek help when we're struggling
- We're more likely to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs
But the numbers only tell part of the story. What they don't capture is the daily experience of being told, implicitly and explicitly, that your pain doesn't matter. That asking for help is weak. That real men handle their problems alone.
Why Men Show Up Differently
Here's something most mental health resources get wrong: they describe depression and anxiety based on how women typically experience them. Sadness. Crying. Withdrawal.
Men often look different when we're struggling. We get angry. We get irritable. We pick fights. We work too much. We drink too much. We take stupid risks.
A man with depression might not look sad. He might look like a jerk. And because no one recognizes what's actually happening, he doesn't get help. He gets criticized. Or avoided. Which makes everything worse.
This is why so many men don't recognize their own mental health issues. The symptoms we're told to look for don't match our experience.
The "Man Up" Problem
Every man reading this has heard it. Man up. Don't be a baby. Take it like a man. Boys don't cry.
These phrases do real damage. They teach us that our emotional lives don't matter. That vulnerability is weakness. That asking for help is failure.
And here's the thing: we internalize this so deeply that we police ourselves. We don't need someone else to tell us to man up anymore. We do it automatically. We shut down our own emotions before anyone else can see them.
This creates men who are disconnected from themselves. Men who can't identify what they're feeling, let alone express it. Men who are unable to show up fully in their relationships because they've cut off access to half of their emotional range.
The Path Forward
I'm not going to give you a list of hotlines and suggest you "reach out to a professional." That advice, while well-meaning, misses the point.
The real work is internal. It starts with recognizing that the rules you were taught about being a man are incomplete at best and harmful at worst.
Here's what actually helps:
Stop calling it weakness. Acknowledging that you're struggling isn't weak. It's honest. And honesty is the foundation of living with integrity.
Learn your own emotional language. If you've spent years suppressing feelings, you might not have words for what you experience. Start paying attention. What does anger feel like in your body? What's underneath it?
Find men who are doing this work. Isolation makes everything worse. Find other men who are willing to be honest about their struggles. Not to complain, but to grow.
Get help that understands men. Not all therapy is created equal. Find someone who understands that men often present differently, that we need to be challenged as much as supported, and that we're not looking for someone to fix us.
What You Can Do Today
If you're a man reading this: start by being honest with yourself. Not with anyone else yet. Just with yourself. What are you carrying that you've never acknowledged?
If you have men in your life who might be struggling: don't tell them to man up. Don't tell them they'll be fine. Ask how they're really doing. And then actually listen. Create space for honesty without trying to fix anything.
The mental health crisis among men isn't going to be solved by awareness campaigns or hotlines. It's going to be solved by changing how we raise boys and how we allow men to exist in the world.
That change starts with us. With how we treat ourselves and each other. With our willingness to break the silence that's killing us.
