The trouble with men and counseling

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“We’re self-reliant. We want to do it ourselves,” asserts Fordham University psychology professor Jay Wade, president of the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity.

Oh sure, one guy might ask another to help him move a fridge if he absolutely can’t do it himself, Wade says. He may bend his bloody knuckles around the phone to call a plumber when the faucet’s still leaking after six trips to the hardware store. But when men at the highest rungs of the masculinity scale are faced with profound emotional pain, “they suck it up, move on, bury it, repress it,” according to Wade. “It doesn’t go away, obviously.”

Statistics show that men are far less willing to visit a doctor of any kind, even when they’re having chest pain or experiencing other life-threatening symptoms, despite the fact that men die in greater numbers from 12 of the 15 most common causes of death. (Remember, women outlive men by an average of five to seven years.)

Read more: http://www.utne.com/mind-body/men-and-counseling-zm0z13mazwil.aspx?page=4#ixzz2Nzn6conm