5 Types of Therapy Men Are Using and What They Can Help With
The world of mind health has broken open like never before. With help from podcasts, influencers, friends and family, and some very open conversations about their own experiences from the likes of Michael Phelps, Dwayne Johnson, and Bruce Springsteen, men are ditching the stigma about mind health and starting to take action. They are no longer keeping a stiff upper lip when it comes to their emotions. Instead, men are prioritizing mind health. The feeling is pretty glorious, and seeking therapy has played a big part in the shift.
More men are going to therapy than ever before. From 2019 to 2021, the percentage of men between the ages of 18 and 44 who had received mental health treatment in the past 12 months increased from 13 to 18 percent. But men still lag behind women when it comes to seeking help, and the disparity is something that the right knowledge might be able to fix.
The most common issues affecting men are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders.
So, what therapies are available to help men deal with these problems? Here are five common, cutting-edge therapeutic approaches. These treatments are helping men see gains in mind health.
1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a widely used, science-backed therapy. It improves the functioning and quality of life. Many therapists consider it the gold standard in therapy. CBT is based on the idea that faulty thoughts drive maladaptive feelings and behaviors. So, CBT helps clients change maladaptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors through something called cognitive restructuring.
CBT also teaches coping skills. Role-playing is sometimes used in CBT to help clients understand themselves better.
Core principles of CBT include:
- Identifying faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking
- Changing faulty thinking
- Identifying how psychological problems are rooted in learned unhelpful behavior
- Learning better ways of coping to relieve symptoms
- Becoming more effective in your own life
CBT allows a person to focus on what they can control instead of dwelling on what created the difficulties in the first place.
What It Can Help With
Cognitive behavioral therapy is effective in the treatment of:
- Depression
- Bipolar disorder
- Anxiety
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Phobias
- Personality disorders
- Eating disorders
- Substance use disorder
- Alcohol use disorder
- Insomnia (CBT-I)
2. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT is an evidenced-based form of CBT. It helps those who experience very intense emotions. It’s also ideal for people who exhibit self-destructive tendencies. DBT meets you where you are instead of focusing on an idealized version of how life should be. It teaches you how to cope with what is happening in the current moment. DBT also helps you acknowledge contradictory feelings without indulging them.
The goal of DBT is to help you:
- Understand and accept difficult emotions
- Learn healthy ways to cope with emotions
- Make positive changes in your life
- Improve relationships with others
DBT does this via the following strategies:
- Mindfulness
- Distress tolerance
- Emotional regulation
- Interpersonal effectiveness
What It Can Help With
DBT was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder. Therapists now use DBT to treat people struggling with:
- Personality disorders
- Mood disorders
- Eating disorders
- Substance abuse
- Patterns of self-harm
- Challenging interpersonal conflicts
- Self-injurious behavior and suicidality
3. Psychedelic Treatment With Psilocybin
Nothing embodies the major shift in the mainstream approach to mind health like the way healthcare professionals have embraced psilocybin. Psilocybin is a psychedelic drug used in treatment-resistant depression. It’s also used for PTSD.
Exactly how psychedelics help depression and PTSD symptoms is largely unknown. Studies have found that these drugs boost neural plasticity, which is the growth of new connections in the brain.
Psilocybin interventions can provide antidepressant effects lasting up to one year. One study involving 27 patients with histories of depression found that psilocybin treatment produced large decreases in depression. These decreases remained one, three, six, and 12 months following treatment.
What It Can Help With
Besides depression and PTSD, psilocybin can help treat:
- Anxiety disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Suicidality
- Tobacco use disorder
- Alcohol use disorder
4. Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy is a more traditional type of talk therapy. During sessions, you work with a therapist to explore unconscious processes. You’ll discover subconscious factors that influence your behavior. You then use this information to fuel personal growth.
Compared to behavioral therapies, psychodynamic therapy lasts for much longer. It can take months or even years for you to “peel away the layers” of your unconscious. Psychodynamic therapy provides lasting results that continue long after therapy has ended. A large meta-analysis found that symptom relief lasted nine months after treatment.
What It Can Help With
Therapists use psychodynamic therapy as a treatment for:
- Depression
- Trauma and PTSD
- Anxiety
- Panic disorder
- Stress-related physical ailments
5. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Used commonly as a PTSD treatment among military veterans, EMDR can reduce the vividness and emotions associated with a traumatic memory. EMDR is there for you whether you’re a soldier or a civilian.
How does EMDR work? You engage in a series of left-to-right eye movements. While you do this, you recall traumatic events until the memories no longer cause stress. Some therapies focus on altering thoughts or emotions to drive behavior change. But, EMDR works differently. It’s believed that your brain stores traumatic memories in a way that doesn’t allow healing. EMDR changes the way the brain stores memories which opens the door for healing to occur.
What It Can Help With
EMDR was first used to treat PTSD. Its use has expanded to include the following disorders:
- Panic attacks
- Phobias
- Social anxiety
- Chronic illness and pain management
The Bottom Line
Your mental wellness shouldn’t be swept under the rug or ignored. By researching types of therapy, you’ve taken the first step towards better mind health. The type of therapy that’s best for you will depend on your specific condition and other factors. Remember it’s okay to switch to a new type of therapy if one doesn’t work for you. No matter which style of therapy you choose, review your therapist’s approach. Ask about their experience providing the type of therapy that you are interested in and the outcomes that have been achieved. Of course there are not guarantees, but this is one area where doing something is most definitely better than doing nothing.
