Effectiveness of man therapy to reduce suicidal ideation and depression among working‐age men: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Objective: This randomized controlled trial of the online intervention, man therapy (MT), evaluated efficacy to reduce suicidal ideation (SI) and depression among working-aged men. Method: Five-hundred and fifty-four men enrolled and 421 completed all surveys. Control Condition men explored the Healthy Men Michigan (HMM) website and Intervention Condition men explored HMM and MT. Hypotheses included men who used MT would report decreased SI and depression over time compared to Control Condition men. Results: Latent growth curve modeling revealed improvements in SI (slope = −0.23, p < 0.001, 95% CI: −0.29, −0.16) and depression (slope = −0.21, p < 0.001, 95% CI: −0.23, −0.18) over time for men in both groups; however, there was no difference in slope based on group assignment. Depression, lifetimeThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Help‐seeking and Man Therapy: The impact of an online suicide intervention

“…The following validated scales were used to measure additional covariates of interest, with reliability scores indicated first from the scales' original study then from Frey and colleagues' (2022) MT study. The HANDS scale (Baer et al, 2000) was used to measure depression (α = 0.87, α = 0.86).…”

“…This study utilizes data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Frey et al, 2022) which examined the effects of Man Therapy (MT), a website providing gender-responsive online education and support. MT was launched originally in Colorado in 2012 and has since been utilized as a public health intervention in Maine, Michigan, and Australia, though it was also accessible outside these campaigns via the internet (https://manth erapy.org/).…”

“…Between 2016–2019, MT was used to engage working‐age men in Michigan at risk for suicide to explore issues including help‐seeking, depression, and suicide. Data for the current study was drawn from Frey and colleagues (2022), which used an RCT design in which the control group was offered immediate risk feedback and referrals through the website Healthy Men Michigan (HMM) after completing their online surveys at screening. The intervention group also received this feedback as well as referrals and were additionally invited to explore the MT website.…”

New directions in male-tailored psychotherapy for depression

“…They found not just a generally high and increasing (over 5 years) global interest in their website, but also considerable visitor engagement. Man Therapy , another online intervention program for men primarily based on CBT-concepts, has been found to improve men’s depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and professional help-seeking behavior in two individual randomized-controlled trials ( Frey et al, 2022 ; Gilgoff et al, 2022 ). Importantly, the “dosing” or amount of engagement with Man Therapy and whether other interventions were used simultaneously has so far not been accounted for.…”

Evaluation of an online suicide prevention campaign targeting men

“…A randomized controlled trial showed that viewing this documentary led to a positive change in terms of (attitudes about) help-seeking intentions and conformity to traditional masculine norms (King et al, 2017). Similarly, Frey et al (2022) conducted a randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of a suicide prevention website providing education and support for men, named Man Therapy. Although the study found an improvement in suicidal ideation and depression for participants in both the control and intervention group, there was no difference between groups for suicidal ideation, depression, or risk and protective factors.…”