A Purposive Sampling-Based Narrative Literature Review of Understanding Men's Help-Seeking Behaviours in Selected Literature

The subject of men’s help-seeking behaviour has been explored over a long period of time in general. Men are believed to be reluctant to seek professional help, putting themselves at an increased risk for developing serious medical or mental health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this subject back to the centre particularly regarding the notion of vaccine hesitancy. At the time, being vaccinated was the only option that medical science suggested could protect against fatal infection. The paper aims to provide a summary of literature on men’s help-seeking behaviour to aid an understanding of this phenomenon, than to produce new conclusions. Using purposive sampling, this paper conducted a knowledge synthesis of selected literature about men’s help-seeking behaviour, couching this against the notion of masculinity, or how men imagine themselves as men. The selected literature was subjected to thematic analysis, and in the end the narrative literature review supported extant knowledge on men’s help-seeking behaviour, and produced seven main themes, namely gender role conflict, socio-economic status and income level, engagement and quality of previous help received, illness awareness and knowledge, power and the counterbalance of femininity, the notion of ‘traditional masculinity’, and men and their masculinity in the context of COVID-19. The paper concluded that how men imagine themselves as men, and as evincing behaviour that should be different from femininity, interfered with their ability to seek help. It posits that availability of resources does not guarantee that men will use them.