THERE HAS NOT BEEN ENOUGH RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR MEN
As a result, we still do not have a strong evidence-base about what works best for men.
What we do know is that different men cope with distress in different ways. What works for one man may not work for another.
For example, some men describe positive experiences with medication, while others do not. The same is true of talking therapies, peer support, and other forms of support.
BUILDING AN INDIVIDUAL TOOLKIT
Over time, each man needs to build his own toolkit of what works for him – drawing on different people, services, activities and opportunities that might help him to live with less pain and with more connection, meaning and hope.
- One man’s toolkit might include therapy, peer support, volunteering and learning a new language.
- For another man, it might involve addiction support, vocational training, medication and joining a running club.
Coping with pain and managing mental health is a life long task for all of us – and what we find helpful can change over our lives.
The support that helps a man through an immediate crisis may not be the same support that helps him rebuild his life months or years later.
our 3 ‘R’ model of recoverY
RECOGNITION. RECONNECTION. REGULATION
Our research suggests that recovery can involve strengthening three important areas of a man’s life: his relationship with his emotions, his relationship with himself, and his relationships with other people.
In practice, this might mean helping a man understand and talk about the difficulties in his life, make sense of what is triggering his distress, rebuild a sense of self-worth that is not defined only by success or failure, and strengthen relationships that give his life care, connection and meaning.
We bring these processes together in our 3R Model of Male Suicide Recovery: Recognition, Reconnection and Regulation.
COPING WITH PAIN AND TACKLING ITS ROOT CAUSES
Across research, several areas emerge as important places to focus support for men.
These areas offer promising directions for helping men, while much more research is still needed to understand how we can make support as effective as possible.
Tools for coping with pain during a suicidal crisis
When psychological pain becomes overwhelming, the immediate priority is staying safe and getting through the storm.
For each man, that will look different. Some may draw on support from other people, create a safety plan, reduce access to means of suicide, use professional or crisis support, take medication where appropriate, or find practical ways to lower the intensity of distress.
Different things may help at different moments — talking to someone, distraction, movement, rest, music, nature, faith, breathing, grounding, or simply having someone stay alongside them while the crisis passes.
These strategies may not resolve what is causing the pain, but they can help reduce its intensity, restore a sense of control and create the space needed to get through when life feels overwhelming.
Understanding root causes
Longer-term support may involve helping a man understand where his psychological pain is coming from, how experiences in his life are affecting him, and what patterns may be keeping that pain going.
That might mean exploring grief, trauma, relationship difficulties, shame, loneliness, feelings of failure, problems with self-worth or other painful experiences. It may also involve developing healthier ways of regulating emotions, rebuilding relationships and self-esteem, reconnecting with meaningful activities and restoring a sense of purpose, hope and possibility.
But recovery cannot rely only on helping a man become better at coping.
If unemployment, debt, addiction, insecure housing, relationship conflict or other difficult circumstances are continuing to generate distress, those problems may also need to change. Long-term recovery may therefore require both psychological and emotional support, and practical help to address the conditions contributing to the pain.
Tackling root causes
Male suicide cannot be prevented through individual support alone. Suicide prevention also means tackling the root causes of men’s psychological pain.
If a man is living with ongoing financial pressure, fighting to see his children, struggling to access disability support, living in insecure housing, or working in circumstances that are damaging his wellbeing, we also need to address what is continuing to pour pain into his life.
Some of these problems may take months or years to resolve. During that time, helping a man manage his pain can be vital – but suicide prevention cannot place all the responsibility on the individual man to become better at coping.
We also need families, services, employers, communities and wider systems to reduce avoidable sources of pain and provide more support when difficult circumstances cannot be changed quickly.
This is where a public health approach matters. It asks us to look at the wider conditions that shape men’s lives – including relationships, education, work, money, housing, discrimination, community, culture and access to support – and consider how we can reduce the pressures that contribute to psychological pain before someone reaches crisis.
Prevention also depends on improving public understanding of suicide. People need the confidence to recognise distress, talk about suicide without shame or panic, respond compassionately when someone says they are struggling, and know where meaningful support can be found.
Professional support that works for men
Encouraging men to seek help is not enough if the support they find does not feel useful, safe or relevant.
We need to better understand the sort of support different men want.
Professionals also need the knowledge and confidence to recognise different presentations of distress, build trust and create environments in which men feel their experiences will be met with compassion and understanding.
Community support
Not every man will want support through a clinic or traditional mental-health service.
Community-based approaches can create more informal places for men to connect, talk, take part in activities and build supportive relationships. These might include sports groups, talking groups, walking groups or other spaces led by people who already have trust and credibility within a community.
Suicide prevention therefore has to extend beyond health services and into the places where men actually live their lives.
Support for significant others
The people closest to a man can be an important part of his recovery.
Family members, partners and friends may provide love, connection, practical support and a reason to keep going. They may also be the first people to notice changes that suggest a man is beginning to struggle.
But supporting someone who is suicidal can be emotionally challenging at times.
Significant others need information about suicide risk, guidance on how to respond, opportunities to be heard by professionals, and support for their own wellbeing.
Where relationships themselves have become painful or strained, support involving both the man and those close to him may sometimes help people understand what has happened and find a way forward.
Peer support
Sometimes the most powerful support comes from someone who has been through something similar.
Peer support can offer understanding without judgement and normalise struggles. Shared experience may also reduce some of the stigma or power imbalance that men can feel in more formal settings.
Opportunities to help others can matter too.
Volunteering, mentoring or supporting other people may help some men rebuild connection, purpose and a sense that they still have something valuable to contribute.
Challenging restrictive ideas about men
We also need to change some of the ways society thinks about men.
Men should not be reduced to stereotypes that portray them as unemotional, unwilling to talk, naturally self-reliant or somehow deficient at seeking help. Men are emotional beings with the same human needs for safety, connection, dignity, belonging and care.
At the same time, we need to examine cultural expectations that may make life harder for some men – for example, pressure to cope alone, remain strong, achieve financially or hide vulnerability – without portraying masculinity itself as inherently harmful. We need broader, more compassionate ways of understanding what it can mean to be a man.
Changing attitudes also means changing how we understand suicide itself. Suicidal pain should not automatically be seen only as evidence of mental illness. For some men, mental-health difficulties are central; for others, distress may make more sense in the context of relationships, financial problems, trauma, work, loss, discrimination or other circumstances in their lives.
"At what age does society decide that the boy, worthy of love, care, and protection, is now a man, and no longer deserving of any?"
SUICIDE PREVENTION IS A LONG TERM ENDEAVOUR
There are no quick fixes to male suicide.
Preventing suicide means better support for when a man is in immediate danger. But it also means looking much further upstream – at childhood, schooling, relationships, work, money, loneliness, health, sex, culture, community and the systems men encounter throughout their lives.
Some of the changes we need will take years.
Building stronger evidence, developing and testing better interventions, improving services, creating safer environments for boys and men, and changing deeply rooted social conditions cannot be achieved through a single campaign or tick-box initiative.
If we want more men not simply to survive a suicidal crisis, but to have lives they want to keep living, this has to be a long-term commitment. It will require sustained research, investment and collaboration across sectors – and a willingness to keep learning, adapting and working on the difficult problems that sit underneath male suicide.
"There isn't an easy answer to this. Unfortunately, it goes deeply into the way that society is organised."
Male suicide is complex but Complexity is not a reason for inaction – it is a reason to dig deeper, listen harder, work together, and keep improving how we respond.
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