The quiet crisis in men’s mental health, and what gets in the way of asking for help

Gavin Demurger-Jones is a held Counsellor and Centre Director. He is also a man who once told his wife there was nothing wrong with him. This is what changed.

There is a particular way that men arrive in a therapy room for the first time. Gavin Demurger-Jones has seen it enough times to recognise it immediately. It is not quite defensiveness, not quite wariness. It is closer to uncertainty. A man sitting down in a chair he has never sat in before, in a conversation he has never had before, in a language he was never really taught.

“It’s a big chunk of the unknown,” Gavin says. “And nobody likes uncertainty. Look at how we all felt during COVID. That dreadful discomfort of not knowing what was coming next. That is something like what walks in with a man on his first session.”

The unfamiliarity, he says, starts long before the therapy room. It starts in childhood.

“Boys get asked what they are doing, how they are getting on at school, what is happening with sport. They do not get asked how they are feeling, or how something made them feel. They are not asked about their internal landscape. They are asked about their actions.” He pauses. “So when they arrive somewhere that is almost entirely about the internal landscape, they do not even have the language. They cannot imagine it. Because that is not how they were brought up.”

—

So what finally gets a man through the door?

It is rarely a single moment, Gavin says, though it can feel like one. More often it is a slow accumulation, a growing sense that something needs to change and that they cannot think their way through it alone. “I don’t think men come in looking for answers,” he says. “I think they are looking for someone to sit alongside them. To help them wrestle with the complexity of their lives. And someone bold enough to hold up a mirror and help them look honestly at what they see.”

That honesty, he says, is what men often respond to most. Not comfort, not reassurance, but a clear-eyed and respectful reckoning with what is actually going on.

The harder question is what happens to the men who never get there. Gavin does not hesitate.

“Burnout. Collapse. Addiction. We break under the load.” He reaches for an image. “Atlas had the world on his shoulders. It takes a god to carry that weight. We are not gods. We will crumble under it eventually. And whatever that crumbling looks like, a breakdown in a relationship, an affair, alcohol, food, exercise, our lives become unregulated. And we collapse.”

—

There is a version of masculinity, still very much alive, that says you do not ask for help. That you handle things yourself. That needing support is a form of weakness. Gavin works with this directly in the room, and he does not meet it with confrontation.

“I gently remind them that they are just a man, much like I am. We make mistakes. Life is really complicated, and we cannot do it by ourselves.” He comes back to the lone wolf, a figure often invoked as an image of masculine self-sufficiency. “Wolves live in packs. That is how they survive. They sleep in circles, each one responsible for a corner, each one protecting the others. The lone wolf is a myth.” He lets that land. “Somewhere along the way, the message about masculinity got a bit screwy. We started imagining the superman who can do everything. And yet on some level, we all know that is not true. It is a superhero. That is what it is. We are simply men who, from time to time, need help to get through a very complicated life.”

—

Men’s mental health is talked about more than it used to be. Awareness campaigns, famous faces, open letters. Does any of it actually shift anything?

Gavin is thoughtful here. He resists the framing slightly. “Therapy is for real life,” he says. “It is for grappling with everything that life throws at you. It is not about being mentally ill or your mental health being below par.” But the conversations matter, he thinks, for a specific reason. “The more people talk about what they are experiencing, the more the language exists. And if you do not have the words, if you cannot connect a feeling with a name, how do you even know what you are carrying?” He thinks of all the men who have sat across from him, struggling to articulate something they have felt for years but never once named. “The more men speak about this, the better. Not because there is something wrong with them. But because the language helps. And the language is still being built.”

—

If a man is reading this and recognising something of himself in it, Gavin does not reach immediately for the professional referral. He starts somewhere quieter.

“You are not alone,” he says. “What you are experiencing is normal, and there are plenty of men out there who have felt exactly what you are feeling.” He pauses. “I am not saying you have to talk about your deepest, darkest secrets. But a little bit of what is going on, with someone. Is there a person at work? A friend? Family can sometimes be too close to home. There are men’s circles, sports clubs, hobby groups, pottery, photography, ten pin bowling. Places where you might find someone on your wavelength.” And then, if the time is right, there are the professional routes too. A GP, a therapist, the Samaritans, who are there, he is careful to note, for far more than crisis. “There is a lot out there,” he says. “You just have to find it. And I know that can take something in itself.”

—

It would be easy to hear all of this as theory. Gavin is a qualified counsellor, a professional, someone whose job it is to say these things. But there is a moment in the conversation where the professional voice drops slightly and something more personal comes through.

His wife suggested he try therapy. He told her not to be ridiculous. There was nothing wrong with him. He truly believed it.

“And here I am now,” he says. “On the other side of the fence.”

He spent twenty years in advertising before retraining. He used to believe he could do everything by himself. He used to go on autopilot, doing whatever was in front of his nose, never really stopping to think about where he was, what he was doing, or why.

“Therapy changed my life,” he says simply. “Once a week, sitting down with someone, talking about your own life, taking just under an hour to think about where you are and what your motivations are. It is amazing what you can change when you actually stop and think.” He shakes his head slightly. “Before that, I had never really thought about it. I just kept going.”

He is not telling men they are broken. He is telling them what he knows from his own experience, that stopping, just once a week, just for an hour, to think about your own life, is not a sign of weakness.

It is, as he puts it, called being a human being.

If you are thinking about therapy and not sure where to start, held is open for enquiries at heldtherapy.space. If you are in crisis or need to talk to someone today, the Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.