LAFAYETTE, La. — June is Men’s Mental Health Month, and for men in Acadiana, that observance carries more weight than most people realize. Louisiana men face some of the most serious mental health challenges in the country, and a statewide study from earlier this year found that men here are struggling at levels that go well beyond what any awareness campaign alone can fix.
The numbers tend to get buried under the cultural pressure to stay quiet and push through. A 2023 Tulane Newcomb Institute survey found that roughly one in nine Louisiana adults — close to 400,000 people statewide — lives with severe depression or anxiety. Suicidal ideation is higher among men than women in Louisiana, reported by 11 percent of men compared to 7 percent of women. Among urban men ages 30 to 44, the numbers are even more troubling: men in that group were twice as likely as women the same age to report suicidal thoughts in the previous year.
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Why Men Don’t Ask for Help
The barrier is not ignorance. It’s stigma, and it runs deep in communities like ours.
Cultural expectations that men should be stoic, self-reliant, and emotionally contained don’t disappear just because a calendar says June. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, men are far less likely than women to receive mental health treatment, and much of that gap comes from underreporting and the social cost men perceive in acknowledging struggle. Research shows that men are less likely than women to turn to friends or family for emotional support — 38 percent versus 54 percent — when they need it most.
In Louisiana, the Tulane researchers identified stigma as a specific obstacle for men, noting that men in our state face greater social barriers to seeking care. That stigma carries a real cost. Men nationally die by suicide at nearly four times the rate of women, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, with firearms accounting for the majority of those deaths. Louisiana recorded 654 suicide deaths in 2024, an age-adjusted rate of 14.1 per 100,000 — a figure that has climbed nearly 19 percent over the past two decades.
What Men’s Mental Health Month Actually Is
Men’s Mental Health Month was established in 1994 and is observed every June, with Men’s Health Week falling the week leading up to Father’s Day. The goal is to shift culture over time, not generate a single conversation — to normalize the idea that asking for help is not weakness but a practical response to a health condition…