Background and objectives
Youth mental health has become a central topic of public discourse. However, the significance of social structures, such as gender norms, for emotional wellbeing remains understudied in Finland. To address this gap in research, the first objective of my thesis was to examine what kind of masculinity discourses young Finnish men produce. By analysing these discourses, I studied how young men view the gendered expectations to be connected to their presumed mental health. My second objective was to analyse what kind of reactions young Finnish men have to the public mental health discourses.
Although the context of this research is not directly in the education or school context, the topic of masculinity and mental health is fundamentally connected to education. First, education plays a significant role in creating, upholding, and dismantling gender norms which create gendered conditions of possibility for individuals. These, in turn, are connected to student wellbeing and the gendered education choices and selection of optional studies. Therefore, gendered expectations and ideals should be widely addressed and scrutinised in educational institutes and practices. Second, education is widely entangled in the wellbeing discourses and therapeutic ethos, which shape students’ understanding of their responsibility and the role of structural issues in mental health services and discourses. Thus, education is closely interlinked to broader societal phenomena, such as gender norms or wellbeing discourses, which are examined in my thesis.
Research questions and methods
The study was conducted utlising a thematic discursive approach to the open answers in a large questionnaire data about young men’s mental health gathered by Nyyti ry and the Family Federation of Finland in November 2020. The thematisation served mainly as a tool to organise the data, while the discursive approach allowed me to examine how the masculinity and mental health discourses in the data were constructed, and to analyse the ideas and practices within these discourses that shape social reality, limiting and enabling young men’s possibilities to act.
Research results and conclusions
Young men produced three lines of masculinity discourses, which highlight how the traditional masculinity ideals remain strong in Finnish society, upheld with narrow representations of masculinity. These ideals were portrayed as restricting, limiting the actions of young men, and to create gendered conditions of opportunity to show weakness, ask for help, and talk about mental health. As a reaction to the public mental health discourses, young men produced critical reactions, illustrating how the prevailing mental health discourses are insufficient in quality and quantity, too individualised, and seen as discriminatory towards men.
This research indicates a clear need to address the structural gendered expectations in order to widen the positions available for men in society and to find useful solutions to support the mental health of young men. For education, this research provides reasons and justification to critically examine the gendered practices and wellbeing discourses utilised in educational contexts.
Inka Tähkä
“Everywhere you get these models of what you should be like.” Men, masculinities, and mental health.