Australian men's initial pathways into mental health services.

Issue Addressed: Many men are challenged by barriers to mental health help-seeking and engagement. For men who do access care, their pathways to engaging services can offer important insights to what might constitute gender-specific care.

Methods: Data were drawn from an online cross-sectional survey of N = 2009 Australian men (aged 16-85; M = 43.5) reflecting on their initial pathways to mental health services, including their reasons for help-seeking, how they first located a therapist and the source of any initial recommendation for engaging with services. Respondents were recruited with targeted advertisements via Movember's Facebook page.

Results: A relatively even age distribution was observed, with most respondents residing in metropolitan areas (60.4%), a majority employed full time (47.7%), and 25.7% identifying as gay or bisexual. Participants tended to be self-motivated to seek help, with referrals by general practitioners to specialist mental health services. The most common underpinning precipitant for seeking help was anxiety, particularly for younger men, whereas older men tended to have sought help more commonly for familial, relationship or work-related factors. Older men were also more likely to report self-motivated help-seeking, whereas younger men more commonly sought help on the recommendation of a family member.

Conclusions: There are varied pathways for men's initial mental health help-seeking journeys that require an ongoing examination to ensure health promotion efforts are appropriately tailored and responding to men's needs.

So What: As more men access mental health services, having a nuanced understanding of their likely pathways to care can inform the help-seeking efforts of other men as well as guide improved services and systems to reduce barriers.