Conformity to masculine norms tied to higher stress and reluctance to seek mental health help

The sample was predominantly white (66.3%), heterosexual (85%), and well-educated, with 41% holding a college degree. Political affiliations varied, with nearly half identifying as Democrats.

Not a demographer much less an American but comparing to the general US populations white is slightly overrepresented (population is 60%), 85% heteros actually checks out if people are identifying correctly, that is, no bi erasure, otherwise heteros are under-represented, 41% college degree is low, 61.28% have an associate degree or higher. Still that doesn't say anything about how much you earn, squinting at it the biases aren't strong enough to discount the results.

If anything the issue is 326 participants on top of that online.

The conformity to masculine norms was measured using the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-30, which covers aspects such as emotional control, winning, playboy behaviors, violence, heterosexual self-presentation, pursuit of status, primacy of work, power over women, self-reliance, and risk-taking.

...that's a very mixed bag, toxicity-wise.

Interestingly, the direct link between traditional masculine norms and depressive symptoms was not significant.

Duh because the symptom descriptions in the DSM-V are female-centric. Same stuff in men first gets undiagnosed because it surfaces as frustration, not lethargy, then at some point you get a burnout diagnosis. Well, either that or you take up farming or something.

However, specific facets of masculine norms, such as heterosexual self-presentation, power over women, and self-reliance, were significantly associated with higher help-seeking self-stigma.

Self-reliance is the key thing to address here, I think, the rest I estimate to be correlation, not causation. And it needs to be addressed properly, because it's the one that hivemind doesn't really get: No it's not a bad thing. Also, no, you don't need to be the undisputed master of the universe. It's also the part where even otherwise progressive women promote toxic masculinity to a significant degree, you all know the "I opened up once about my problems and I'm never going to do that again" type of stories. I can't even fathom how much would change if the default reaction instead was "Don't know what to do? Call a male friend of his to take him fishing". In the meantime, let's be self-reliant and take people fishing without their SOs calling.

“From a positive psychology perspective, clinicians are turning to a strengths-based approach to encourage and reinforce positive masculine traits (Englar-Carlson & Kiselica, 2013), which may help to reframe help-seeking as an action of strength instead of weakness, thereby encouraging men to seek support for mental health when they need it.”

Yes! Apes together strong. Tough challenge, though, with the current degree of alienation and, especially in the US, rugged individualism. OTOH we don't need no psychologists or access to therapy to frame things like that.

I don't think the "US sucks at the availability of therapy" angle is wrong, as such, it's definitely a huge factor -- but it's probably also not the most efficient leverage point to change the system. That's always the issue with reductive analysis: You might spot a real issue, a very core issue indeed, but the solution often doesn't lie with the core issue but among factors which enable it. In this case, voter's attitude to availability of care would certainly change if "that's for losers, also, fuck you got mine" wasn't as predominant a social force.