Men and boys disappearing from all areas of psychology
Females outnumber males in the field, both as therapists and subjects of research
Males are disappearing from the field of North American psychology — both as research subjects and as psychotherapists.
The evidence is overwhelming that psychological research is becoming heavily focused on girls’ and women’s issues, and that males are rapidly vanishing from psycho-therapeutic professions.
The consequences of these dual trajectories, say specialists, is that the distinct emotional struggles of boys and men are largely being sidelined and that many psychotherapists are lacking expertise in dealing effectively with males’ psychological difficulties.
A revealing study led by the University of B.C.’s Robinder Bedi found the vast majority of 293 research articles published over a 13-year period in the influential Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy centred on female-specific topics.
Research articles exclusively on female subjects out-numbered those on male subjects by four to one, Bedi discovered. When his team excluded a single special “men’s” edition of the psychotherapy journal from their survey, the ratio of femaleto male-oriented articles in the journal soared to 15 to one.
“All of this is occurring despite … boys and men making up 34 per cent of individuals participating in counselling and psychology,” writes Bedi, an assistant professor of counselling psychology at UBC.
“It appears that much of our knowledge about counselling Canadians has been based upon research samples composed predominantly of women and has been somewhat uncritically generalized to working with men,” write Bedi and co-authors Courtney Young, Jaleh Davari, Karen Spring and Daniel Kane in a peer-reviewed paper titled A Content Analysis of Gendered Research.
Their overview of contemporary psychotherapeutic research in Canada dovetails with rising awareness across North America of a related development: That women are becoming even more predominant in counselling and psychology professions.
The American Psychological Association, which represents roughly 90,000 clinical psychologists, found women outnumber men by more than two to one. And it’s quickly becoming more extreme: The ratio of female psychologists to male psychologists who are 35 and under jumps to almost 10 to one.
“The gender gap in the psychology workforce has widened,” says a report by the American Psychological Association. “This gender gap was even wider for racial/ethnic minority groups.… It is important to understand both why a greater number of females have entered the workforce and why fewer males have entered the workforce, and more males have exited.”
The ever-widening chasm among younger psychologists is similar in Canada and B.C. The spring edition of The Chronicle, published by the B.C. College of Psychologists, included a chart showing the province has roughly six registered female psychologists age 35 and under for every one male psychologist of that same age group.
Even though it’s accepted that psychotherapists of one sex can often be effective at treating people of another sex, similar issues are being raised about the preponderance of females in teaching, social work and most health professions.
The gender gap among psychologists has become so acute in Britain that a group of male and females has formed the Male Psychology Network.
“Is there an actual need for more male psychologists?” asks co-founder John Barry, of University College London. “Well, men appear to need psychological help. For instance, they commit suicide at over three times the rate of women. Yet they seek help less than women do. If we care about mental health, then we need to ask questions like, ‘What can we do to improve help-seeking in men?’ and, ‘Would men be more likely to seek therapy if they could see a male psychologist?’”
Bedi and his team are raising similar questions about the lack of research into male psychological issues, particularly given men’s much higher likelihood of death by suicide, in the workplace and from opioid overdoses.
What is the benefit of more counsellors and psychologists becoming better aware of men’s issues?
Many psychotherapists frequently “experience a sense of frustration, helplessness and ineffectiveness when working with male clients,” report UBC professors Marvin Westwood and the University of Victoria’s Timothy Black.
Research has shown that some therapeutic techniques that are usually effective with women do not always work as effectively with men, and vice versa, according to psychologists who specialize in men and issues of masculinity.
A greater number of therapists and psychologists need to be aware of techniques that are more effective with men than women, including “direct problem solving,” “skills development” and “practical help,” writes Bedi, a clinical psychologist who also specializes in working with Punjabi Sikhs.
When psychologists such as Marcheta Evans have urged greater focus on men in counselling and research, they have been met with concerns about “male privilege.” But Evans responds that, even though a portion of men hold higher paying jobs, it does not mean the “significant mental health needs” of men in general should be ignored.
“The counselling profession is failing men,” say Bedi and his co-authors, who wonder aloud whether one of the reasons fewer males seek therapy is the “limited masculine gender competence” exhibited by many psychotherapists.
The authors see their article as “a call to action in the service of men in Canada and abroad.… We hope our article further stimulates conversations, research and theorizing about counselling men and boys.”