Death by suicide is a male emergency. Although three times as many women as men report suicidal ideation and attempts, the vast majority of deaths by suicide in the U.S. — up to 80% — are among men. The reasons: higher impulsivity, lower reported fear of death, and, crucially, easy access to guns.
The most recent report from Crisis Text Line — a nonprofit working with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to provide free and confidential text-based mental health support — sheds light on another explanation: Men reach out for help a lot less than women.
Out of 1.5 million messages it received in 2025, the organization found that less then 20% of the texters identified as male only (this figure does not include texters who selected more than one gender identity), even as they were more likely than women to discuss suicide in their messages, especially at a young age. In the data for 2025, the organization found that 1 in 3 conversations with boys under 14 mentioned suicide.
“That lack of reaching out despite the fact that boys and men experience such high levels of distress and crisis is really important to emphasize, and it’s true for the crisis text line and it holds for other helplines in the field more broadly,” said Tracy Costigan, vice president of impact evaluation and storytelling at Crisis Text Line, and an author of the report. “Boys and men are socialized to equate self-reliance with strength and [see] help-seeking as a weakness, and this is really conformity to traditional masculine norms.”
The new report, presented on Tuesday in a briefing hosted by the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, analyzes 71,000 conversations held between 2022 and 2024 with men and boys. The sample is not representative of the broader male population because Crisis Text Line users tend to be relatively young, with two-thirds under 35, and self-selected as more likely to reach out for help. Yet, Costigan said, the findings are in line with documented help-seeking patterns in the broader population of boys and men, who are less likely to see a therapist or contact help lines than women, and frequently report lacking people they feel comfortable speaking to.
“As a researcher who studies men’s mental health and help-seeking behavior, I’m not surprised,” Michael Addis, a professor of psychology at Clark University, said about the small percentage of men reaching out to the crisis line. Through his research and in his book “Invisible Men,” about the male reluctance to discuss their vulnerabilities, he identified several factors that make seeking help “a very hard step to take” for men, including the stigma associated with being perceived as weak, and cultural norms that promote self-reliance.
The topic of masculinity is at the center of the current political debate, with differing takes on how it affects male mental health. On May 4, at a MAHA Institute panel on the use of antidepressants, Admiral Brian Christine, Health and Human Services assistant secretary, said challenges to traditional masculinity contribute to the mental health crisis among men.
“This is a cultural issue, it’s a societal issue, we’ve created a culture where a lot of men feel like they are on the outside looking in,” he said. “In some spaces, the message is that masculinity itself is something to be minimized, something to be criticized, and by some something to be demonized. And we can see the effects: We see boys falling behind in school, we see young men stepping away from the workforce, we see a quiet but growing sense that they are not needed.”
Addis and other academics who study masculinity disagree with this interpretation. “The answer is to promote less of a concern with masculinity, not more of it. We don’t need to repair men’s masculinity to improve their mental health,” Addis said. “We need to teach them how to be more flexible in the way they understand it or to even let go of the need to perform it,” he said.
The report shows a progression in the reasons for men’s unhappiness: For younger men, relationship stress was the biggest preoccupation, reaching a peak of concern in boys 14 to 17, and then decreasing with age while isolation and loneliness became more of an issue, peaking at 65.
“Boys and men really talk about the importance of social connection to support them when they’re in distress,” Costigan said. “At the same time, while we found loneliness increasing with age, mentions of relying on friends and social connection as a coping strategy decreased with age, so we really need to make sure we’re supporting older men as well with opportunities for social connection.”
Whereas boys and men discuss relationships and loneliness in the context of a crisis, mental health service dispels the cultural stereotype “that girls are relational and boys are more autonomous and that women are more focused on relationships and men are more focused on achievement,” Addis said. Instead, men do feel the importance of relationships. “I think what’s happened is that for many of us, it’s not that relationships aren’t important, they’re incredibly important. It’s that we haven’t been equipped with the skills necessary to cope with distress in relationships, to keep relationships healthy around us.”
Dominick Shattuck, a Johns Hopkins University researcher and a men’s health fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, said “young men really want to have these social connections with other young men, and they want to be in a relationship and they want to use words like love and friendship and caring, but they move away from it over time.”
The takeaway, Shattuck said, is developmental. Boys need to be equipped with better emotional literacy earlier in life so that they can carry the capacity of building and nurturing relationships as they grow older. “The report helps identify the coping mechanisms they already turn to, including social connection, exercise or sports, creative outlets, mental health services, and time in nature,” Shattuck said. “That is important because it frames prevention around strengthening existing protective factors, not only expanding clinical care.” Not all spaces that take care of boys’ and men’s mental well-being need to be formal, he added: “They can be barbershops, they can be sports clubs, they can be friends who hang out.”
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
STAT’s coverage of health challenges facing men and boys is supported by Rise Together, a donor advised fund sponsored and administered by National Philanthropic Trust and established by Richard Reeves, founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men; and by the Boston Foundation. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.