Beyond Men Behaving Badly: A Meta-Ethnography of Men’s Perspectives on Psychological Distress and Help Seeking

Abstract

Men’s hesitancy to seek help for psychological distress is demonstrated in the quantitative literature. Men’s perspectives and experiences need to be better understood to inform policy and practice. A meta-ethnography was conducted of 51 qualitative studies on men’s perspectives on psychological distress and help seeking. Findings indicate most participants’ conceptualizations of psychological distress are sociallybased and many have difficulty with the term “depression.” Men’s accounts show notions of masculinity negatively impacts mental health and acts as a barrier to help seeking. Challenging the common characterization of men, men reveal the impact of interpersonal factors on mental health. Gender is revealed as a determinant of health that interacts with economic security, ethnicity and sexuality. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.