Mental health is one of the most pressing healthcare challenges of our time. While more men are seeking mental health support than ever before, new data reveals that nearly half of those who start therapy drop out before completing treatment – highlighting a need for healthcare systems to take action.
Dr Nic Woods, Chief Health Officer for Bupa APAC, explores what healthcare systems can do to support men after they’ve taken the first step – and how Bupa’s latest initiative is helping to keep more men engaged in mental health services.
In brief:
- Improving mental health outcomes requires more than broadening access. Success depends on keeping people engaged throughout their care journey. Many men, in particular, continue to fall through the gaps in traditional models of care, with research showing almost half disengage from therapy before completing treatment.
- Health services play a crucial role in recognising and responding when men do reach out for support, creating opportunities for earlier intervention, preventive care and more consistent follow-up. Therapists can better understand how men experience and express mental health challenges, identify those at risk earlier and support them to stay connected to care.
- Bupa has partnered with leading men’s health charity Movember to provide clinicians with evidence-based training. This training is designed to help more men stay engaged with mental health support, through Bupa’s Mindplace mental health centres in the UK and Australia. Early results from Movember's Men in Mind programme show that 94% of respondents felt more confident working with male clients and 59% reported improved engagement after completing the training.
Where men’s mental health support can fall short
When we talk about men’s mental health, the conversation often centres on a single challenge: getting men to reach out in the first place. For years, public health campaigns have rightly focused on reducing the stigma associated with seeking support and challenging “tough it out” attitudes. But getting a man through the front door of a clinic or onto a video call is only half the battle, and what happens after that first step is where traditional models of care can still fall short.
Of those men who do seek help, research shows that 45% disengage from therapy before completing treatment. At the same time, studies suggest there are important opportunities to strengthen support and follow-up care. In the UK, 50% of men aged 40-54 who died by suicide in 2017 had previously been in contact with mental health services, while in Australia, 87% of men who died by suicide had accessed a health service in the year before their death.
How we can better support men’s mental health
Demand for men’s mental health support is growing, creating an important opportunity for healthcare providers to rethink how that support is delivered. In the UK, the number of men accessing Bupa’s mental health support services has increased by 280% since the start of 2025 – underlining the need for tailored, accessible care.
Healthcare providers must adapt to meet this shift. We have a valuable opportunity to move beyond reactive, crisis-driven models towards earlier intervention and preventive care – but we also need to encourage sustained engagement and consistent care over time.
Around the world, initiatives that offer men a place to regularly engage with one another or professional support have been some of the most successful at creating this sort of sustained aid. After starting in Australia, the Men’s Sheds Association now operates more than 2,500 spaces across 12 countries. This initiative offers men spaces to connect, learn skills that range from cooking to lawnmower repair or support local volunteering efforts. In the UK, suicide prevention charity AndysManClub offers free-to-attend peer-to-peer support groups across the country and online, and now runs more than 350 weekly sessions reaching over 6,500 attendees. In today’s world, digital solutions can also help: making access and ongoing engagement frictionless, helping men prioritise their mental health and fit connection around their daily lives.
Where Movember and Mindplace can offer support
To put these insights into practice, Bupa has partnered with men’s health charity Movember to help more men stay engaged with mental health support. Movember has focused on mental health and suicide prevention for two decades, officially adding it as a funded cause in 2006 – just three years after the charity began in 2003. Its programme with Australian mental health and wellbeing support organisation Beyond Blue reached millions of men with offers of free cognitive behavioural therapy sessions after its 2018 launch.
As part of the partnership, clinicians across Bupa’s Mindplace mental health centres in the UK and Australia will participate in Movember’s evidence-based Men in Mind training programme, delivered by global learning platform Bupa Campus. Men in Mind is designed as a shared toolkit for engaging men and recognising risk – helping care providers to frame care in ways that men engage with and identify warning signs that can sometimes be hidden.
Early results from the programme have shown 94% of respondents felt more confident working with male clients after completing the training, and 98% reported an improvement in their score on the Engaging with Men in Therapy Scale (EMITS). A further 85% said they had since applied what they learned in their own practice – while among those clinicians, 59% reported improved engagement with male clients, either through greater client openness or clinicians feeling more confident in those conversations.
This forms part of Bupa’s £140m investment in Mindplace, which offers walk-in support, appointments and therapy programmes designed to help people access care earlier.
Men’s mental health is increasingly a part of the public health conversation, but there’s still work to do in ensuring that everyone who looks for help gets it. By combining Movember’s research-backed training with our expanding network of Mindplace centres and connected digital services, we can help make support easier for men to access, encourage them to stay the course and assist more people to get the personalised support they need.
