Mental health experts fear depression in boys going untreated, undetected

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Mental health specialists are worried that depression in young and teenage boys may be going on undetected and untreated.

A study shows “boys are disappearing” from mental health care.

Experts explain that boys aren’t always  as expressive with their struggles. They say it is not a stereotype, but part of the way many boys and young men process things like anxiety, grief and loneliness.

Whether it’s societal expectations of staying strong or self-imposed, it’s happening more often.

“Typically what happens with young boys is a lot of their emotions are internalized and their symptoms are completely opposite, where they're not expressing their emotions outwardly in a behavior manner,” Family therapist Jay Barnett said. “They tend to express aggressively. They tend to be a bit irritable, and they tend to have a short fuse, because there isn't really a model that has been constructed.”

A study in the Journal of Pediatrics found that while antidepressant prescriptions have risen dramatically for teenage girls and women in their 20s, the rate of similar medications for young men had a sharp decline in 2020 and did not bounce back.

Experts are concerned with what this could mean for these young men when they grow up.

“You're breeding a generation of young males who won't have the ability to self-regulate their emotions. You're breeding a generation of young males that would be overly aggressive. They would be overly dismissive,” Barnett said. “You have a lot of young males who will become men who will look at everything around them as a nail because the only tool that they have in their toolkit is a hammer.”