Men's Mental Health Blog
Gender inequalities in social support
David
Conrad, February 2010
Positive,
mutually beneficial and sustainable relationships are an important aspect of
good mental health which can be easily taken for granted. At both an individual
and a community level, good social relations are good for health and negative
relations are bad for health. As well as helping to protect us from the onset
or recurrence of mental ill-health, strong social networks can also help us to
recover from mental disorders. Social participation has been found to reduce
the likelihood of an onset of common mental illness, while low social support
reduces the likelihood of a recovery. We also know that people who suffer from
poor mental health tend to report smaller social networks, with fewer intimate
relationships and a lower quality of support.
Our
support networks can include the nuclear and extended family, friendships, work
colleagues, neighbours, religious organisations, clubs and societies. In times
of crisis we tend to help our immediate family first, then our extended family
and then our friends and neighbours. As it is these basic social connections
that are mostly looked to for emotional support, they have the greatest
influence on mental health and the ability to recover from emotional stress and
trauma throughout the life course.
Studies
have suggested that men's social support is generally inferior to that of women
and that women report higher levels of social support than men. Women tend to
engage in more reciprocal and confiding relationships and rely more on wider
family and friends for support. Men's primary source of emotional support are female
family members and in a time of crisis men tend to rely on their wives or
partners. Even for adolescent boys, who look increasingly to their peer groups
for identity and validation, family relationships remain critical to well-being.
Boosting social connectedness should be seen
as an essential element of health promotion for all, but the more limited
access to social support that men experience and the reluctance which they
typically demonstrate to building social capital rich relationships beyond
their close female family make it a particular issue for promoting men's mental
health.
Interventions which
help men and boys to strengthen and maintain close relationships should be the
first line of attack in a strategy to boost their access to social support.
Work with ‘dads and lads', anger management programmes and healthy sexuality
education are practical examples of mental health promotion which ultimately
help men to achieve more positive, trusting and stable close relationships with
relatives and partners. These kinds of interventions never get referred to as ‘social
capital building' exercises, or sold to the clients on that basis - but they
don't need to be in order to be effective.
David Conrad is a Specialty
Registrar in Public Health and Associate Member of the Centre for Men's Health at Leeds Met University. His forthcoming book
‘Promoting
Men's Mental Health', co-edited with Professor Alan White, is due for
publication at the end of April.