A Portfolio of Study, Therapeutic Practice and Research Including an Investigation of the Construction of a 'Crisis' in Male Mental Health.

The study reported here examines the current construction of a crisis in male mental health and its association with the enactment of masculinity. It is suggested that such an awareness is relevant to, and should inform the therapeutic endeavour with men. Discourse analysis is employed to examine the rhetorical construction of a crisis in a series of broadsheet newspaper articles, which focused explicitly on issues of male mental health and masculinity. The analysis suggests that the crisis is constructed to implicate changes in the roles of men and women in society, particularly in terms of power relations in the workplace and sexual domain, in which women are seen as benefiting and men are presented as victims; with no mention of any continued inequality for women. There is a presentation of a dominant, hegemonic masculinity, threatened by these changes, simultaneously viewed as problematic and damaging to men, yet representing a standard against which alternative forms of masculinity are judged and undermined