ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the landscape regarding initiatives aimed at enhancing men’s engagement in mental health services and interventions tailored to men’s needs. It focuses on the understanding that men’s mental health is an interdisciplinary healthcare issue, requiring attention and action from researchers and clinicians of diverse backgrounds in order to bring about meaningful change. The chapter describes some specific community-based and clinically based programs that target men’s mental health promotion and mental illness treatments. The field of men’s mental health is gaining momentum as clinicians and researchers from an array of healthcare disciplines attempt to better understand and address many men’s reticence to seek professional help. Mental health treatment has often been described as Eurocentric in its construction, representative of a “white institution,” thus distancing racial minority men and often being inappropriate for engaging them. Gay and bisexual men are another at-risk, socially marginalized community with poor mental health outcomes.
