Men's Health Awareness Month: This One Is for the Young Guys

By Denise Takakjy, LPC | June 2025 | Healing Hearts Healthy Minds

If you are a parent reading this, stay with me. This one is for your son - but it is for you too. And if you are a young guy reading this yourself, even better. This is for you.

June Is Men's Health Awareness Month

Most conversations about men's health start and stop at physical health. Go to the doctor. Get your bloodwork done. Wear sunscreen. All of that matters. But there is a part of men's health that gets skipped over almost every time, and the numbers show what that silence is costing.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for males between the ages of 15 and 34 in the United States. Men die by suicide nearly four times more often than women, according to the CDC. And in 2023, only 17 percent of American men sought help from a mental health professional, compared to nearly 29 percent of women.

That gap is not because men are struggling less. It is because something keeps getting in the way.

What Gets in the Way

Research published in the European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry journal identified what stops adolescent boys and young men from seeking help. It is not complicated. It comes down to a message that gets repeated in a thousand quiet ways from a very early age: handle it yourself. Be strong. Do not make it a bigger deal than it is.

That message is not malicious. It usually comes from people who love you. But it lands wrong. It teaches young men to manage pain alone, to read struggling as weakness, and to wait until things are much worse than they needed to get before asking for anything.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 85 percent of youth who do not seek mental health care say the main reason is that they believe they should be able to handle it on their own. Eighty-five percent. That is not a personal failing. That is a script that a lot of young men were handed and nobody ever questioned.

What This Actually Looks Like

Mental health struggles in young men do not always look like what people picture. They rarely show up as crying and talking about feelings.

They show up as anger that seems out of nowhere. Shutting people out. Taking bigger risks. Staying numb. Gaming or drinking or staying busy enough that there is no space to feel anything. Sleeping too much or not at all. Performing fine in every way that is visible and coming undone in every way that is not.

Sometimes they show up as nothing at all. Flat. Going through the motions. Present but not really there.

None of that means something is wrong with you. It means something is happening that deserves attention.

What Seeking Help Actually Means

It does not mean you cannot handle things. It does not mean something is broken. It does not mean you are weak, and anyone who tells you otherwise is working from an outdated and genuinely dangerous version of what strength looks like.

What it actually means is that you decided the weight you are carrying is worth addressing. That you are taking your own life seriously enough to invest in it. That is not soft. That is one of the harder things a young man can do, especially when the message he has heard his whole life points in the opposite direction.

For the Parents Reading This

Your son is not going to bring it up first. Most of them do not. Not because they do not want help, but because they have learned, often without anyone meaning to teach them, that needing help is not something you say out loud.

The most important thing you can do is say it first. Name what you are noticing. Not as a diagnosis or a confrontation, but as a simple observation from someone who loves him. I have noticed you seem tired lately. I am not going anywhere. You do not have to be fine all the time around me.

And then mean it. Sit with whatever comes. Do not rush to fix it or minimize it. Just stay.

Why I Work With Young Men

At Healing Hearts Healthy Minds, I work with teens and young adults between 13 and 24 across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. Young men are part of that work, and they are welcome here without having to explain themselves or justify why they came.

If you are a young guy who has been carrying something heavier than you are letting on, a free 15-minute consultation is a conversation, nothing more. If you are a parent who has been watching your son and wondering, same thing.

Reach out at healingheartshealthyminds.com or call (484) 302-7298.

If you or someone you know is in crisis right now, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. It is free, confidential, and available around the clock.

Serving teens and young adults ages 13 to 24 and their families via telehealth in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut.