Counselling with Men in Mind: Understanding and Responding to Men’s Distress and Suicidality

In this course, Dr Zac Seidler, Director of Mental Health Training, Movember, and research fellow at Orygen, explains why many mental health programs and services for suicidal men are missing the mark. Citing research statistics showing the high rate of premature departure from counselling and the high rate of repeat suicide attempts after psychological treatment, Dr Seidler proposes that the externalising of symptoms, the role of masculinity in suicide, and numerous other cultural, environmental, and situational stressors mean that clinicians may often miss signs of increasing suicidality in men. Conformity to violence and high self-reliance underpin male suicidality and the three stages of intervention proposed by Seidler can help men to normalise suicidal ideation, validate the role of situational stressors, and enact shared control and decision-making. Men’s masculinity can be leveraged to work toward keeping them in life. Seidler believes that it is not so much that more services and programs are needed as that the current ones need to change to meet men’s needs. Thus clinicians need to be upskilled, including undergoing gender competence training, in order to help bring down the high rates of male suicide.