Comment on Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans

• BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I did, but your main assertion that therapists are women, women don’t understand the male perspective therefore mental healthcare for men, (like talk therapy and counseling) are ineffective. Is not just completely wrong, you start talking about how gendered biases effect the outcome. Ignoring that psychology is an incredibly complex, extremely well-documented and highly regarded field of study, That’s like saying you wouldn’t trust a female virtuoso guitarist to perform ‘Master of Puppets’ because her female perspective would bias her against playing a solo written by a man. I am a man, I have had some success in therapy and counseling. I need more work, I’ll admit. But, all of the best practitioners I have worked with have been women. If you go to counseling, with a social worker, or a master’s student in psychology, yeah that can be a bit dodgy. But the idea that a registered psychotherapist, a doctor, would not be able to provide effective treatment because women can’t understand men is absolutely petulent. It is a myth pervaded, by a lot of influential male voices online. It misunderstands the whole purpose of talk therapy and they mis-characterise it as “giving advice” and “putting biases in your head.” When they are literally just there to help you confront and come to terms with things that are affecting your ability to live. This stupid argument is always propped up by the same idea of women not being able to understand the male perspective. When really, the disparity between the sexes in terms of reported mental health issues, is actually because people make arguments like yours. They say “all therapists are women and women don’t understand the male perspective” and “women report higher levels of depression and anxiety, therefore mood disorders are women’s issues.” When, in fact, it is men that dominate the field of psychotherapy, psychology and psychiatry. It is also us men that are killing themselves in record numbers, it is us that drive cars into street markets, it is us that shoot into crowds of people and then turn the gun on ourselves and it is boys that go online and see men like you. Making these harmful, disingenuous, ignorant arguments that makes them believe that their mental health is unimportant and that any pain, or issue they are having difficulty with is their problem and a flaw in themselves.

  I have read your comment, I have read all of your comments in this thread and your rhetoric is not just wholly emblematic of someone who has never done any meaningful work in therapy, it is dangerous and invalidating to kids who don’t have the experience and don’t know any better. That’s why you expand your argument, from therapists to the entire field, because then it goes from sexist nonsense, to a broader discussion on the existence of human bias. Personally, I wouldn’t trust someone, who has never so much as opened a textbook on abnormal psychology, to be a great judge of the existence of gendered biases in contemporary psychological care. I swear, if more men could be brave enough to admit that we endure psychological strain and experience issues through that strain that manifest in ways that effect our lives, we wouldn’t have Trump. Roe V Wade would be codified. So many of today’s problems exist because of the stigma round men seeking help with their mental health. So, yes I recognise your arguments and your perspectives and they are prejudiced, unhelpful and dangerous. When young men going through crises see this stuff and haven’t developed a sense of identity yet, they adopt this. Because this is what they think they’re supposed to believe, because boys look to contemporary male ideas and figures to emulate perceived masculinity. That’s how you get idiots on the Internet trying to discredit what is arguably the single most needed field of medicine in the world right now. That’s how you normalise male loneliness and hopelessness that the situation can improve, you make young men feel like no one can understand them, or help them understand themselves and that is how you get radicalisation, incels and domestic terrorists. So, maybe just stop with the whole "injustice over the feeling of being a man whose feelings are not understood and actually go to therapy. It might help you empathise with other people’s perspectives, perhaps you could analyse why you have these uninformed beliefs about this field of healthcare you seem so impassioned about discrediting and maybe even help you understand why it feels like no one gets you and the effect your words have on the well-being of impressionable members of our sex and what that means for men, as a whole and our feelings about our place in society? It would help all of us.

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  • whostosay@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Godamn son, didn’t have to nuke him

    Well put, though.

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