Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness

by Vivek H. Murthy

In virtually every country, men are more likely to take their own lives than women are. This, in spite of the fact that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression.28 Mara Grunau, executive director at the Centre for Suicide Prevention29 in Canada, says that women are protected in part because they’re encouraged at a young age to communicate their emotions. “Mothers talk way more to their girl children than their boy children,” she told the BBC in 2019, “and they share and identify feelings.” But boys are told to tough it out and hide any sign of vulnerability, and they are also less likely to go to the doctor or seek help.30 We are forcing boys into a mold of “toughness” that actually leaves them emotionally defenseless. As Niobe Way observed, when men feel emotionally isolated, they’re as likely as women to feel lonely. But the harder it is for them to acknowledge their feelings, the more likely it is for their loneliness to come out as verbal abuse, short temperedness, impatience, and irritability.