 By Bart Magee, Ph.D.
According to recent reports, California continues to struggle to meet the mental health needs of its citizens. Among US states, California ranks poorly in terms of access to mental health care (30). The percentage of people needing but not receiving treatment is 61%, ranking the state near the bottom at 47. This is an ongoing tragedy. We know that untreated mental health disorders is one of the strongest predictors of illness and disability and costs billions of dollars a year in lost wages and productivity. And every day we witness real human suffering and recognize other innumerable costs: homelessness, incarceration, premature death.
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 By Bart Magee, Ph.D.
In the weeks since the Parkland school massacre, many of us have been heartened by a renewed focus on the need for sensible gun control led by young survivors and other advocates. I also found myself intrigued by the public discourse that, understandably, seeks to explore the social and psychological underpinnings of violence. Within that discussion, we are hearing a growing chorus of voices calling out “toxic masculinity” not only as a root cause of gun violence (an estimated 97% of mass shooters are men), but also as a contributor to a range of social ills, from sexual abuse and domestic violence to trolling, harassment, and bullying. Writing in the Times, the comedian Michael Ian Black urges us to rescue boys who are trapped in an “outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others.” Black and those who study masculinity note that a masculine gender role equating strength with dominance and vulnerability with shameful weakness leaves boys and men ill equipped to cope with a changing social climate in which white, heterosexual, men no longer rule with unquestioned authority. Cultural changes have allowed women, gay men, and people of color to gain social standing that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, while straight, white men are suffocating in their gender constriction and not adjusting well to the new world. |