ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of how gender and culture should be addressed in mental health and how we evolve beyond current discourses that treat them as markers of peculiarity or ignore them. In presenting the state of knowledge on gender, culture and mental health as a problem, it presents ideas about how we as mental health professionals and researchers can make that problem something that is perceivable, recognizable, discussable, and actionable. Gender is the social corollary to ideas of biological sex that are currently in flux, focusing attention to the social and cultural distinctions between people who occupy various gender identities. Masculinity research presents men as suffering due to improper enactment of a masculine role, potentially complicated by sexual or cultural identities that frustrate their efforts to emulate a mentally healthy masculine norm. The problem with past-still-present conceptualizations of gender, culture and mental health is that they dramatically oversimplify how gender, culture and mental health intersect.
