Are We Facing a Mental Health Crisis for Boys?


Are We Facing a Mental Health Crisis for Boys?

By Laura McKenna 
edutopia.org
8 min



Emphasizing stoicism, toughness, and competition can leave boys without the emotional tools they need to thrive. How can we change course before the problem gets out of hand?


While Niobe Way was working toward her PhD in counseling at Harvard University in the late 1980s, she was struck by the fact that boys frequently told her during therapy sessions that they wished they had better friendships.

Decades later, Way, now a professor of developmental psychology at New York University and the author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, has interviewed more than a thousand boys and has found that little has changed. “The culture of hypermasculinity makes it harder for boys to form relationships, and that leads to a crisis of connection,” said Way, who has discovered that while boys desire connections with peers, they tend to distance themselves as they age, due to social stigmas.

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