On top of being an expert on crisis helpline services, Woodward, who is based in Australia, has worked in mental health and suicide prevention for 25 years as a policy adviser, evaluator and researcher.
“The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Youth Mental Health research from last year found evidence that their mental health, broadly speaking, had been in a decline for at least a decade.
To Woodward, it is a challenge faced by most countries, as the manifestations of the impact can be seen in all manner of lives.
Pivoting to how young men are becoming increasingly moulded by influences from the online world and why parents are failing to notice it, Woodward stressed that there are several barriers at play that make it difficult for parents.
“Coupled to that is the influence of discrimination, social attitudes or stigma that may make people reticent to say ‘I am struggling. I am not coping with things. I feel terrible’. There is already that barrier that exists for younger people from talking to their parents.”
“The world has changed a lot and it has created a divide in the generations, where young people might wonder if their parents and other older people can understand their reality. The online world or the digital world has certainly been a big part of that.
Positives, pitfalls of manosphere
In its current form, the internet presents young people with material and content that are either positive or negative, and both are attractive. It is one of the reasons that the online world is as much a part of their lives as the physical world.
“The positive side of that is that there is a part of the online environment that presents support and positive messages that help.”
“One of the things that the report found was about two-thirds of the young men surveyed were regularly engaging with masculinity influencers online. What they also found was that they enjoyed or found it satisfying to engage with these influencers because they felt that they were being motivated by them and that helped them develop a sense of purpose or control with their lives”.
“That is, they reduced their willingness to prioritise their mental health and engaged in higher rates of risky behaviour such as steroid abuse, exercising while injured or other unsafe behaviours.”
The conversation inevitably led to the intersection between the role of parents and the manosphere in the lives of young men. When asked about the role of fathers and other men in society as a prevention effort, Woodward said role models need to be truly helpful and wholly interested in guiding the young for authentic reasons.
“They should also be adults who are curious enough to ask and listen to what a young person is experiencing, rather than telling them what to experience or to do,” he said.
According to him, the most frequent issues are personal or family relationship.
Though most of the studies and research – for young men and their mental health – and Woodward’s experience is based on the West, it is something that is publicly increasing in Asia, particularly for a new “pattern” that Woodward and those in his field are seeing.
“One thing that has changed in recent times is we are seeing far more contacts from people who are profoundly lonely or socially isolated. It is really disturbing to see so many young people expressing that they have this loneliness and social isolation, where they are looking for company and contact with others. That I think is a real challenge, now and into the future.”
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