Can a female psychologist effectively work with male clients?

Yes. Research by Seidler and colleagues (2024) found that after completing evidence-based training such as the Men in Mind program, female therapists' confidence in working with male clients rose to match that of male practitioners, with no significant difference post-training. A female therapist who understands how masculinity interacts with distress, names the gender dynamic openly, and adopts a collaborative, action-oriented approach can provide an effective therapeutic experience for men.

How does male loneliness differ across the lifespan in Australia?

Research using over 20 years of Australian longitudinal data found that male loneliness peaks in the mid-forties, dips around age 70, then rises again as health declines and partners are lost. Key risk factors across all ages include social isolation, relationship dissolution, and rigid beliefs about traditional gender roles. For working-age men, insecure employment discourages investment in workplace friendships. For older men, volunteering and holding less rigid gender attitudes are protective.

I'm Good, Thanks (and Other White Lies Men Tell about Mental Health)

Q: Why are more men seeking therapy in Australia?

Men across all age groups are increasingly presenting to therapy with relationship difficulties, workplace stress, identity confusion, and a quiet distress they struggle to name. Contributing factors include rising social isolation (58% of Gen Z report feeling socially isolated), the decline of structured social networks through work and relationships, and growing awareness that traditional models of masculinity are no longer adequate guides. Australian data shows that men aged 35 to 49 have nearly twice the odds of severe loneliness compared to younger men.

Q: What is the Men in Mind training program?

Men in Mind is an evidence-based training program developed by Dr Zac Seidler and funded by Movember. It helps mental health practitioners understand how masculinities interact with distress and develop practical, gender-responsive strategies for working with male clients. A randomised controlled trial with 587 Australian practitioners demonstrated significant improvements in clinical competence and confidence following the training.

Q: What therapy approaches work best for men?

Research suggests men tend to prefer therapy that is action-oriented and goal-focused rather than heavily weighted toward emotional disclosure in the early stages. Effective approaches include starting with practical problem-solving or structured skill-building, using body-based cues and scaling exercises rather than expecting emotional fluency from the outset, adopting a collaborative therapeutic stance, and naming the gender dynamic openly when it is present in the room.

1 day ago

11 min read

What men are carrying, and how a woman psychologist is learning to meet them where they are

Man sitting in consultation, reflecting on masculinity and mental health in therapy

I am a woman in my mid-forties. I have two daughters, a partner and a private practice in Melbourne. When a man walks into my consulting room he does not see someone who looks like him. He sees a woman, often from a different generation, working in a profession that was not designed with him in mind. And, more and more, he comes anyway.

In 2023 Australia had 29,896 registered female general psychologists and 7,168 registered male general psychologists, a ratio of roughly 4.2 to 1, or about 81 per cent female and 19 per cent male. The AIHW's workforce data shows the same pattern, with 80 per cent of psychologists nationally being women.

Over the past two years I have seen a clear rise in men seeking therapy at my practice. Some are in their twenties, some in their fifties. They arrive with relationship difficulties, workplace stress, confusion about who they are, anger they cannot account for, or a quiet misery they struggle to name. What links them across the age range is a particular kind of uncertainty. They are trying to work out their place. The models their fathers and grandfathers used feel out of date, and the public conversation about masculinity often sounds to them like an accusation rather than an invitation. They want to be good men and good people. They are asking what that looks like in practice now.

The conditions men are living in

The context matters, and the data is consistent across the lifespan. Australia's Real Relationships Report 2025 found that nearly one in three Australians feel socially isolated, rising to 58 per cent among Gen Z. Isolation is not only a young person's problem. A 2025 population survey by Lim and colleagues in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia found that men aged 35 to 49 had almost twice the odds of severe loneliness compared with men aged 18 to 34. The 2025 HILDA Statistical Report, released in September 2025 and covering 23 waves of data from 2001 to 2023, shows the social ground under these figures giving way. Average agreement with the statement "I seem to have a lot of friends" fell from 4.6 to 4.1 on a seven-point scale between 2001 and 2023, with the decline accelerating during the pandemic and no recovery since. The share of Australians who see friends or relatives several times a week or more dropped from about 32 per cent to 20 per cent over the same period. The report also found a stronger association between loneliness and psychological distress than in earlier years, for men and women alike, and that people who felt they had more friends reported significantly lower distress. Botha and Bower's earlier analysis of HILDA data (2024), drawing on more than twenty years of longitudinal data, found that on a multi-item measure loneliness among Australian men peaked in the mid-forties, dipped around seventy, then rose again as health failed and partners died.

At every age the same factors predicted greater loneliness. Social isolation, relationship breakdown and rigid beliefs about traditional gender roles. Having a partner was protective throughout life. For working-age men, job security mattered a great deal, because insecure and contract work discouraged investment in workplace friendships and left little time for anything else. For men past working age, volunteering and holding less rigid views about gender roles were both protective. The capacity to adapt one's sense of purpose and identity seems to matter more as the external scaffolding falls away.

Movember and beyondblue's joint research on men's social connectedness found that half of Australian men rarely discuss personal matters with their friends. The reasons did not vary much with age. Fear of breaking the stoic image, uncertainty about whether others could be trusted with their feelings, and a habit of forming friendships through shared activity that dissolved when circumstances changed. A man in his twenties loses touch with his university friends after graduation. A man in his fifties loses his social network along with his marriage. The mechanism is identical. For many men connection happens incidentally through structure, and when the structure moves the relationships go with it.

Relationships Australia NSW reported during Movember 2025 that a long-term study of more than 14,000 men found a significant rise in suicidal ideation after separation. International research on separation after fifty suggests divorced men are lonelier than widowed men, probably because the social response differs. A widower receives concern and support. A divorced man is expected to get on with it. Three-quarters of people who die by suicide in Australia are men.

Where men are looking for guidance about mental health

When men go looking for answers about rejection, confidence or relationships, they increasingly find them online. Movember's 2025 report Young Men's Health in a Digital World surveyed more than 3,000 men aged 16 to 25 across Australia, the UK and the US and found that 63 per cent regularly consumed content from masculinity influencers. Forty-three per cent found it motivating and 45 per cent found it entertaining. The same report identified a troubling paradox. Men who engaged regularly with this content reported higher psychological distress, including feelings of worthlessness (27 per cent against 23 per cent of non-viewers), and were less likely to prioritise their mental health or to count social connection as part of success.

Dr Zac Seidler, Movember's Global Director of Men's Mental Health Research and a clinical psychologist at the University of Melbourne's Orygen Institute, has described the appeal as rooted in intolerance of uncertainty. Men are searching for clear answers, and influencers supply certainty even when it is false. The Movember data concerned men under 25, but the dynamic is not confined to them. I see it across my caseload. A young man arrives using vocabulary borrowed from online culture, talking about "tradwives" or "looksmaxxing". An older man arrives insecure about his career standing and his financial future, and frustrated at reporting to a woman he perceives as less experienced and promoted to fill a quota. The problems differ. The need underneath them is the same. They want to feel competent, worthy and connected, and they want solutions.

Being a woman in the room

I want to be direct about something that arises regularly in my practice, sometimes spoken and sometimes not. Many of my male clients have complicated feelings about women. Some have been hurt in relationships. Some carry anger they are ashamed of. Some have absorbed, from online spaces or from decades of unexamined assumption, a framing of women as adversaries. And they are sitting across from a woman in a position of professional authority, being asked to be vulnerable. Clinically, this is an unusually rich situation. It also demands deliberate self-awareness on my part.

A 2021 study by Seidler and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Psychology surveyed 421 Australian therapists about the difficulties of working with male clients. Three themes emerged. Men's wavering commitment, therapists' perception of men as ill-equipped for therapy, and therapists' own uncertainty. The authors observed that much of what therapists attributed to fixed male traits was better understood as changeable under the right conditions.

Movember's randomised controlled trial of its Men in Mind training, conducted with 587 Australian mental health practitioners, found that female therapists began with significantly lower confidence in working with men than their male colleagues. After completing the training, their confidence rose to match, with no significant difference between the groups.

I recognised myself in that gap. I am an experienced psychologist, and when I sat with the question honestly I could see I had been less certain with men than with other client groups. That recognition is part of why I enrolled in Men in Mind. The program, developed by Dr Seidler and funded by Movember, helps practitioners understand how masculinities interact with distress and build practical, gender-responsive strategies. It is the first evidence-based training of its kind, and it has already changed how I work with the men in front of me.

What I am learning about meeting men in the room

Since beginning Men in Mind I have made several deliberate adjustments, informed by the research, the training and the men themselves. They apply across my male caseload, with the emphasis shifting from person to person.

The first is pacing and directness. Men tend to prefer therapy that is action-oriented and goal-focused rather than weighted toward emotional disclosure from the start. I begin where the client is, which often means practical problem-solving or structured skill-building. The emotional work arrives once the man is confident that we are doing something useful.

The second is language. Many men lack a working vocabulary for their inner experience. For some that is a socialisation gap left by a generation of "toughen up" messaging. For others, particularly men who built their adult identity around provision and control, it is the residue of emotional suppression so complete that having feelings about something, rather than opinions, is a new idea. Men in Mind gives specific attention to working with men who struggle to articulate their emotional world. I use body-based cues, scaling exercises and pattern-mapping rather than expecting clients to arrive fluent in the language of feelings.

The third is the therapeutic relationship. The literature on alliance with men suggests they connect more strongly with therapists who remember personal details, treat them as individuals and work collaboratively. The men who stay in therapy are the ones who can tell that I am interested in them as people.

The fourth, and possibly the most important, is naming the gender dynamic out loud. When a man is watching my reactions as he talks about anger, conflict with a partner or the frustrations of dating, I will sometimes say something like, "You seem to be observing me closely right now. I wonder if there is a concern about how I am hearing you." The relief is usually visible. It tells him that I can see the dynamic, and that his experience can be held without judgement, even by a woman who might, in his mind, be expected to take the other side.

What men deserve

The men in my consulting rooms are not a threat and not a problem to be solved. They are ordinary, decent people under strain that would test anyone. In May 2025 the Albanese Government appointed Dan Repacholi MP as Australia's first Special Envoy for Men's Health, an acknowledgement that men and boys have specific health needs that warrant serious attention. The Australian Government's 2024 partnership with the Movember Institute to promote healthy masculinity frames the work as preventive and strengths-based, aimed at helping men build the skills and confidence for healthy relationships.

The men I work with want a masculinity that is strong without being rigid, emotionally present without being performative, and capable of real intimacy. What they need depends on where they are in life. For some it is structural, meaning affordable housing, secure work and community spaces where genuine connection is possible. For others it is rebuilding after loss, finding an identity beyond a career, learning to keep friendships going without a partner to organise them, or finding purpose when life looks nothing like the plan. Across all of it they need relational skills. Sitting with discomfort, naming what they feel, repairing after conflict, staying present when every instinct says to shut down. Programs like Men in Mind exist because the profession recognised that therapists needed better preparation for this work. I am glad to be doing that preparation now, alongside the men I am already seeing.

I do this work as a woman who is, depending on the client, the age of a mother, a sister, a daughter, a partner or an ex-wife. I am not the obvious person for the job, and that may be part of why it works. A woman who holds the line, who does not flinch at anger, who does not confirm the fear that vulnerability will be punished, can be a corrective experience in herself. She gives a man lived evidence that he can be fully present and still be respected.

If any of this sounds familiar, for you or for someone you know, booking a session with a psychologist is one of the most practical steps available. Many of us care about understanding what men need, and you are welcome to contact me directly.

Resources

Behavioural Edge Psychology, www.behaviouraledgepsychology.com.
Men in Mind (Movember practitioner training), meninmind.movember.com.
Movember, au.movember.com.
beyondblue, www.beyondblue.org.au or 1300 22 4636.
Lifeline, 13 11 14 (24 hours).
MensLine Australia, 1300 78 99 78.
Man Cave, www.themancave.life.
Top Blokes Foundation, www.topblokes.org.au.

Frequently asked questions

Why are more men seeking therapy in Australia?

Men of all ages are presenting with relationship difficulties, workplace stress, uncertainty about identity and a distress they find hard to name. Rising social isolation (58 per cent of Gen Z report feeling socially isolated), the loss of structured social networks through work and relationships, and growing recognition that traditional models of masculinity no longer serve as reliable guides all contribute. Australian data shows men aged 35 to 49 have almost twice the odds of severe loneliness compared with younger men.

Can a female psychologist work effectively with male clients?

Yes. Seidler and colleagues (2024) found that after evidence-based training such as Men in Mind, female therapists' confidence in working with men rose to match that of male practitioners. A woman who understands how masculinity interacts with distress, names the gender dynamic openly and works in a collaborative, action-oriented way can offer men an effective therapeutic experience.

What is the Men in Mind training program?

Men in Mind is an evidence-based program developed by Dr Zac Seidler and funded by Movember. It helps mental health practitioners understand how masculinities interact with distress and develop gender-responsive strategies for working with men. A randomised controlled trial with 587 Australian practitioners showed significant gains in clinical competence and confidence after training.

How does male loneliness change across the lifespan in Australia?

Analysis of more than twenty years of Australian longitudinal data found male loneliness peaks in the mid-forties, dips around seventy, then rises again as health declines and partners are lost. Risk factors at every age include social isolation, relationship breakdown and rigid beliefs about gender roles. Insecure employment discourages workplace friendships in working-age men. Volunteering and flexible gender attitudes protect older men.

What therapy approaches work best for men?

The research suggests men prefer therapy that is action-oriented and goal-focused rather than centred on emotional disclosure from the outset. Effective practice starts with practical problem-solving or skill-building, uses body-based cues and scaling rather than expecting emotional fluency, takes a collaborative stance, and names the gender dynamic openly when it is present.

References and sources

Botha, F. and Bower, M. (2024). Predictors of male loneliness across life stages: An Australian study of longitudinal data. BMC Public Health, 24, Article 1285.
Bumble (2024). Global Dating Trends 2025. Bumble Inc.
Department of Social Services (2024). Movember partnership to help young men to have healthy and respectful relationships. Australian Government.
Forbes Health and OnePoll (2025). Dating App Burnout Survey. Forbes Health, July 2025.
Lim, M.H. et al. (2025). Understanding loneliness as a preventive health priority among men: Findings from an Australian population survey. Health Promotion Journal of Australia.
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (2025). The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey: Selected Findings from Waves 1 to 23 (2025 HILDA Statistical Report). University of Melbourne, September 2025.
Movember Foundation (2025). Young Men's Health in a Digital World. Movember Institute of Men's Health.
Arbes, V., Coulton, C. and Boekel, C. (2014). Men's Social Connectedness. Report for beyondblue, funded by the Movember Foundation. Hall and Partners Open Mind.
Real Insurance and MYMAVINS (2025). Real Relationships Report 2025. Sydney.
Relationships Australia NSW (2025). When relationships end, men's mental health can be at serious risk. Media release, November 2025.
Seidler, Z.E. et al. (2021). Challenges working with men: Australian therapists' perspectives. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 77(12), 2781 to 2797.
Seidler, Z.E. et al. (2022). Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of the Men in Mind training for mental health practitioners. BMC Psychology, 10(1), Article 174.
Seidler, Z.E. et al. (2024). A randomized wait-list controlled trial of Men in Mind: Enhancing mental health practitioners' self-rated clinical competencies to work with men. American Psychologist, 79(3), 423 to 436.
Seidler, Z.E. et al. (2025). Does therapist gender matter when working with men? Movember Institute of Men's Health, Substack.

This article is intended for general information and psychoeducation only and does not constitute individual psychological advice. If you are experiencing distress, please contact one of the services listed above or book an appointment with a registered psychologist.