Do men typically get more support than women?

[FruitPastel54321]

I went to the GP around a year ago as I was suffering stress, anxiety and mild depression. It took me several years to muster up the courage to go as I told myself I’d be wasting their time or I’d be humiliated into being told I was being too dramatic or emotional or something. The GP was female, I talked through how I was feeling, recent trigger points and how I’ve lived felt for the last 5-years.

The advice I was given was to take a magnesium salt bath twice a week. I got back into my car and burst into tears - it took so much courage for me to actually open up and admit I needed help, and the response is the exact reason I’d put it off for so long. My husband agreed this was an absolute joke and was so incredibly supportive, he encouraged me to go back a few weeks later. I saw someone else and was asked about my lifestyle, diet, exercise routine, sleep quality… I had to specifically ask to be signed off work so I could quieten my brain and prioritise my mental health for a few weeks without the distraction of the corporate world. She signed me off for 2 weeks at a time, meaning I had to repeatedly ask for extensions and spend a lot of time logging back into work to update my employer with new fit notes. I had around 10 weeks off in total.

For comparison, my husband went to the GP about 4 months ago as he felt he was feeling more stressed and snappy over the course of the last 2 WEEKS so decided on a whim to see if there was any advice he could get on how to manage his mood. Same practice but a different doctor. At the first appointment he was immediately signed off work for 6 weeks, referred for therapy and given antidepressants. Whilst I am so pleased he’s getting the help and support he deserves, and I am aware that he could have let more on to the GP than he does to me (though he seemed as shocked as me by their response and told me how the conversation went) - I can’t help but feel a little disheartened that his concerns were taken so much more seriously than mine.

Neither of us have shared our issues with anyone outside of the marriage so we don’t have anyone to discuss it with and compare to, so I guess I’m just interested to hear people’s thoughts and whether the encouragement to open the discussion around men’s mental health means women’s is being dismissed even more so than it historically has (what I mean by this is us typically being labelled as hormonal and emotional). We’re very honest with each other and I’ve told him jokingly that perhaps he should accompany me to my future appointments, they’re more likely to listen to him 😂

Gosh, we sound like a fun couple, don’t we! The joys of 3 babies under 5, redundancies and a house move… we are super grateful for the life we have, and remind ourselves how lucky we are frequently ❤️

I do think with certain health issues men are taken more seriously and more research goes into male conditions. Could you make an appointment with the same doctor he saw and see what they say? Is your OH feeling a bit better? Can he support you now that he is more stable so you can get the help you clearly need?

Because of our culture, the average man does not ask for mental health help until it is at crisis point. Even your DH only went as a social experiment after you went. If it had been totally up to him, he would still be suffering in silence, and his depression actually sounds like it might be worse than or just as bad as yours.

Men are over 3x more likely to commit suicide than women, so when a man goes to the GP saying he is stressed and depressed he is automatically seen as higher risk than a woman.

It is a sex bias based on population level realities. Women tend to seek help before it reaches crisis point, so that is why we are more likely to be diagnosed with depression.

You have to be persistent. Call the 111 NHS hotline for mental health whenever you’re crying and distressed. The GP sees only your game face after you have pulled yourself together. Next time they suggest take baths or have a cup of tea or mindfulness or a walk in the park, let the tears out in the office.

You have to let the mask slip. They expect a depressed woman not be strong and collected like a depressed man is, they expect us to be crying with snot running and flapping about like a helpless chicken.

edited- you do not need to be grateful, depression does not discriminate it is an illness that strikes when stressed no matter if it is stress from good or bad events.

I think this is very common across multiple areas of healthcare. But with mental health, it's known that the man is more likely to take suicide as an option which means healthcare treats the risk

I’d expect them to know that women are about 3x as likely to attempt suicide though. They just use methods less likely to result in death because they tend to be slower so more likely to be found, or methods easier to misjudge.

YANBU OP, I spoke to my GP about postnatal depression (where suicide is the most common cause of death in the period 6 weeks-1 year after giving birth) and he told me to “sleep more”. It was only when DH spoke to them about me that it was taken seriously and I had someone from the perinatal mental health team in my living room the next day.

That is incorrect. The rounded rate is 9% women vs 7% men for the lifetime risk of an unsuccessful suicide attempt. The reason men’s % of unsuccessful suicide attempts is a bit lower is because they attempt and succeed far more often.

If we look at attempts both unsucessful plus successful, men are still at 3x higher risk.

“Women were more likely than men to have ever made a suicide attempt (8.6% compared with 6.9%)”
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/adult-psychiatric-morbidity-survey/survey-of-mental-health-and-wellbeing-england-2023-24/suicidal-thoughts-suicide-attempts-and-self-harm

It's impossible to generalise from this situation, because we don't know exactly what was said and the doctors were different. Hope you are both starting to feel better.

There's so much inequality in health care. Whilst I agree because it's rare for men to reach out for MH issues they seem to be taken more seriously. But there's no getting away from most of womens problems being diagnosed as "hormonal"/ over reaction, and it completely sucks!

3 times more likely to COMPLETE suicide (because they tend to choose more violent means)

In reality less men self harm and attempt suicide than women. Women are actually more likely to be suffering from mental health so badly that they are harming themselves and attempting suicide - this ‘men are suffering more and need more support’ narrative based on the fact that more men actually die because they choose trains/guns/cliffs/bridges etc needs to stop - women are dismissed medically enough as it is.

I took the 3x figure from a study that looked at multiple studies from developed countries.

The uncompleted/unsuccessful suicide attempts by sex over the past year reported 27/11/2025 for the year ending July 2024 were roughly equal between the sexes at 1% each.

Women have the slightly higher lifetime risk as I mentioned above.

Same source as before:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/adult-psychiatric-morbidity-survey/survey-of-mental-health-and-wellbeing-england-2023-24/suicidal-thoughts-suicide-attempts-and-self-harm

On an annual basis, men attempt just as often as women but succeed far more often.

Yes women self harm without suicidal intent more often then men but that is because we tend to project anger inwards, while men project anger outwards into domestic violence.

Great, would love to see the link.

I don’t know.

my partner went to the doctors for bad mental health around 8 years ago. He said he didn’t want tablets and didn’t know what help he wanted. Just that he was struggling.

when I went, I said I was depressed, I needed help in the form of therapy and anti depressants. I got both and was also diagnosed autistic and ADHD.

my DP went recently again after me begging him to ask them for tablets and therapy. The doctor off his own back said he needed assessing for autism because he is quite clearly autistic and doesn’t know why this has never been brought up. Gave him tablets and therapy sessions.

both the same neurodivergence, both asked for what we want, both got it.

i have only ever been fobbed off with pain. DP got physio, I got codeine. Guess who’s still on the codeine and who isn’t going to physio…

I think the extremity of difference between your two experiences, @FruitPastel54321 is much too great to be put down to a difference of treatment based on sex (though that may have been a part of it).

I don't know what the statistics are, but of course it wouldn't be at all surprising if men were listened to a bit more seriously than women in this area.

But in this case I'm sure other things were at play. It must surely be unusual to be signed off for six weeks on a first report to the GP of depression.
In my experience, doctors are very hung up on the question of whether or not a patient has had suicidal thoughts, so perhaps that was a factor. And of course men do kill themselves at a higher rate than women, so it may in some circs be legit for a GP to respond differently to a mans and a womans talk in relation to suicide. (EDIT: It may also have been that his stress was more work-centred than yours - he may have reported work worries that he doesn't share with you. That would make a work-sigh-off more understandable)

And there is also lots of variation between GPs - some are just more rubbish than other.

Thank you all. I guess my exasperation was because I explained to the GP I’d been struggling for years and the reasons I’d put off getting help until that point, whereas my husband said he’d felt a bit more snappy for a few weeks. Luckily I was able to access therapy through a wonderful private GP after changing jobs which has really helped, and my husband has also seen a huge improvement with the time off and medication he was prescribed, so the end goals have I guess been/are close to being achieved, and that’s what matters.

It’s interesting to see and hear so many statistics around MH crisis points varying between males and females; thank you to everyone who has shared those

Yeah I've always found taking the husband with me seems to get better results than if I just went by myself.

Tbh I'm not even sure it's because men wait until crisis point. When my autistic daughter needed mental health help it was a fucking slog. When my youngest son needed it, all the stops have been pulled out for him with multiple people without the need to push it. There is a difference between how males and females are treated.

I have never even considered that. Maybe because men are considered to be less likely to ask for help so it is immediately taken more seriously? I don't know. I only have sons and my own mental health has always been taken very seriously by the doctor I see. Maybe your husband is more direct and therefore better at advocating for himself? Or could just be different doctors with a different approach to MH concerns.

I nearly broke myself trying to get help for my DH when he had mental health problems. It took months of desperation, him hitting rock bottom and me almost on my knees begging for us to get him any help.

I would say mental health provision is in a parlous state for men and women.

I agree with this. Another factor is that different doctors treat patients differently. Some are gung-ho and want to throw everything and the kitchen sink from the beginning, others are "let's start small and work from there".