Chris Newman is a GP in Ramsgate. He volunteers as a staff man and as a medic for the ManKind Project.
John sits back in the chair, shoulders rounded, his gaze fixed on the floor between his feet. He tells me his partner left him three months ago, the mother of five of his children. Since then he’s felt painfully alone, ruminating over his mistakes, and wondering if he was ever really loved at all. Every so often he glances up at me briefly, as if checking how his words are landing before continuing.
He knows men are supposed to talk about mental health now. A friend even sent him the powerful viral video from Norwich Football Club imploring men to ‘check in on those around you’.1 Yet when he is with friends he has known for years, the words will not come. The only person he can really talk to now is his mother.*
Men, however, tend to be overly reliant on romantic relationships for their intimacy, which may partly explain why they are less likely to initiate breakups and suffer more when relationships fall apart.
I run through the PHQ-9 screening questionnaire with him, and he is not surprised that his score equates to moderate depression. His ex-partner has been saying he could be depressed for years. He regrets waiting until she left to take action. Perhaps if he had she wouldn’t have left. We agree on a referral for therapy, but I tell him I don’t think it’s healthy that his mother is his only close confidante. Research confirms what we might expect: close friendships protect mental health, particularly when people can share difficult feelings with one another.2 Men, however, tend to be overly reliant on romantic relationships for their intimacy, which may partly explain why they are less likely to initiate breakups and suffer more when relationships fall apart.3 Given that his current friendships lack intimacy, I suspect he may benefit from developing new ones, or from practising new ways of talking with men. I suggest Manspace, a local men’s peer support group, similar to Andy’s Man Club, Talk Club, and others that have emerged over the past decade; spaces where men speak without judgement or attempts to fix them.
As soon as I raise the idea, he perks up. He looks into my eyes briefly but intensely, as if I have noticed something about him that few others have. I pull up their Instagram account and he carefully types the URL into his phone. Moments like this have become more common recently. After 15 years of general practice without ever mentioning men’s groups, I now raise them almost weekly, and every couple of months I see a response like John’s.
My willingness to suggest such groups has been reinforced by the NHS increasingly signposting patients to them, with Andy’s Man Club most frequently cited. This is part of a wider commitment to tackle the fact that men account for three in every four suicides.4 Men’s Sheds, where men work alongside one another ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’, are also widely recommended, reflecting evidence of improved social connection among participants. Many men credit these organisations with keeping them alive.5
John is not suicidal and is highly motivated to recover. He really wants to win his partner back. But he wonders whether he will always carry the sense of inadequacy and fear of rejection that was imbued in him by his father’s belt and harsh put-downs. Those experiences were so early and cut so deep they’ve shaped how he sees himself. A narrative he can’t easily rewrite. I suspect he may need to explore this at greater depth than brief therapies or peer groups typically allow. So I suggest the Mankind Project,6 an organisation I know both personally and professionally, while making clear it may not suit him.
Alongside structured peer-led support groups similar to Andy’s Man Club, many participants in the ManKind Project (MKP) undertake the ‘New Warrior Training Adventure’, described as a form of modern male initiation and self-examination, drawing on the idea of the ‘hero’s journey’. I wonder whether John will recoil from the unfamiliar language, but instead he is curious. I tell him I found it profoundly helpful and he asks about it. So I give him a brief outline. I found that the immersion in shared physical and emotional challenges with a group of men, separated from the stresses of daily life, helped me access parts of myself I had struggled to reach elsewhere, including in therapy. I relayed how I am still in a weekly group with men I met on that weekend and how in some ways they know me better than anyone ever has.
I’m mindful not to oversell my own story however, and bring it back to the evidence, which suggests improvements in mood, life satisfaction, and relationships at one-year follow-up for the majority,7 though these findings inevitably reflect a group of men with the time, resources, and motivation to attend.
With the options given and the therapy referral made, there is little more to do. John commits to going to Manspace and researching MKP. As he gets up to leave he meets my gaze more directly than when he arrived, and tells me that knowing such spaces exist for men makes him feel less like he’s on his own. I’m reminded how unusual it still feels to hear men say this in the consulting room.
Many men report finding connection easier through shared activity than through explicitly emotional conversation, though this is far from universal.
Reflecting afterwards, I realised it wasn’t the PHQ-9 score or the referral that created that moment of connection, but something closer to what Carl Rogers called accurate empathy; when someone feels deeply understood.8 When John looked up with that intensity, I think I named something he’d never heard named: his hunger for close male relationships.
John’s hunger for connection is not unusual. Only 38% of men would turn to a friend for emotional support, compared with 54% of women,9 and men are twice as likely as women to have no-one they can rely on for emotional support10 And given the explosion in men’s groups over the last decade, this gap appears, at least in part, to reflect cultural factors rather than something fixed or innate.
Men’s groups and initiations won’t suit everyone. Many men report finding connection easier through shared activity than through explicitly emotional conversation, though this is far from universal. Some prefer a more mixed approach, combining an activity or sport with talking, like the Football for Thought programme delivers.11 Men’s groups also aren’t replacements for therapy, but they offer something our current system often cannot: sustained relational practice where vulnerability becomes possible, where peers mirror back parts of yourself you’ve kept hidden. For men like John, a regular space in which he can be truly seen by his peers may be as therapeutic as any intervention I can prescribe.
*Author’s note: John is a fictional patient based on the author’s extensive clinical experience and not any one particular patient, living or deceased.
References
- Check in on those around you. A video by Norwich City Football Club. 2023 Oct 10 [accessed 10/2/26]
- Pezirkianidis C et al. Adult friendship and wellbeing: A systematic review with practical implications. Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 24;14:1059057.
- Brincat C. Romantic Hopes: Men actually crave romantic relationships more than women do. Sci Am. 2025 Jun 1;332(6):12.
- Office of National Statistics: Suicides in England and Wales: 2023 registrations
- UK Parliament: Written evidence submitted by The UK Men’s Sheds Association. 2023 Sep 5 [accessed 10/2/26]
- The Mankind Project UK and Ireland: mankindprojectUKI.org [accessed 10/2/26]
- Burke CK et al. Healing men and community: predictors of outcome in a men’s initiatory and support organization. Am J Community Psychol. 2010 Mar;45(1-2):186-200.
- https://www.psychotherapy.net/article/accurate-empathy-rogerian-therapy
- Pew Research Centre. Men, Women and Social Connections. 2025 Jan 16: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2025/01/16/men-women-and-social-connections/ [accessed 10/2/26]
- Mind Cwn Taf Morgannwyg. Men twice as likely as women to have no one to rely on for emotional support. 2016 Jul 14 [accessed 10/2/26]
- Football for thought: headinthegame.co.uk/our-programmes/football-for-thought/ [accessed 10/2/26]
Featured Photo by Markus Henze on Unsplash
