Absent bodies and invisible lives

3. Men’s mental health in and out of work

Men’s mental health in and out of work (Oliffe & Han, 2014)

Image by Bernd Strohbach Dr. med. from Pixabay

The mental health of men is an important issue with significant direct and indirect costs emerging from work-related depression and suicide. Although the merits of men’s community-based and workplace mental health promotion initiatives have been endorsed, few programmes are mandated or formally evaluated and reported on. Also conspicuously absent are gender analyses detailing connections between masculinities and men’s work-related depression and suicide on which to build men-centred mental health promotion programmes. 

Oliffe & Han (2014) make an overview of four interconnected issues:  

  • masculinities and men’s health, 
  • men and work, 
  • men’s work-related depression and suicide, and 
  • men’s mental health promotion, in the context of men’s diverse relationships to work (including job insecurity and unemployment).