The Evolutionary Roots of the Male Mental Health Crisis
Psychology Today | 20.08.2026 03:59
It’s striking how long men’s troubles have gone unnoticed. Men account for roughly 80% of suicides in the United States and nearly three out of every four “deaths of despair,” a term coined by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton for the combination of deaths due to drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths, and suicides (Case & Deaton, 2021; Reeves, 2022). And this pattern extends past mortality as well: Among Americans aged 25 to 34, 47% of women now hold a bachelor’s degree compared to 37% of men, a gap that did not exist as recently as 1995 (Pew Research Center, 2024), while the share of men ages 25 to 54 outside the labor force entirely has roughly doubled since the 1970s, rising from 5.8% to 11.4% (Bengali et al., 2023).
