A few years ago I worked in a health service alongside a young female psychologist who was extremely bubbly and happy, and who had barely experienced hardship in her life. In my work with her I got to know one of her male clients who was a middle-aged husband living with his wife and kids. At the time he had presented to the health service with depression. He was extremely self-critical, and hated many aspects of his current life. He was fed up with constantly trying to please his wife, and was feeling the pressure due to the fact that he had recently been made redundant. As a result of his redundancy he would often think things to himself such as “I’m a useless piece of shit” and “I’m f**king worthless”, such was his fem-centric plantation as a loyal beta provider. To him, he was no good unless he could put money on the table and be someone that his family could be “proud” of. He frequently said to the therapist that his own personal needs didn’t matter, and that he thought it was his role to make himself a servant for his family.

I had a bad feeling about him working with the young female therapist, but kept my mouth shut as I had no explicit reason why she should not be working with him. Still, I genuinely felt for the man’s plight, so I occasionally checked in with the female therapist to see how he was doing. “Well we’re working on lots of the negative thoughts about himself”, she said one day. “He really hates himself! For him though, his sense of self-worth is entirely dependent on his ability to provide for his family and be a good father. I think that if we can get him up and moving, and doing more things for his wife and kids again, he will feel so much better. It’s really important that he starts to focus more on them and their wellbeing”. When she told me this, I was dumb-founded. Six years of study, and this was the wisdom that she could provide. To her, this poor man was only happy when he was living a life of sacrifice, with none of his personal needs being met at all. “I wonder about his needs though” I offered tentatively, but knowing that she didn’t really respect my opinion because I wasn’t a clinician. I also tried to help her identify the things that he liked and wanted to do by himself, but she wasn’t really listening. To her, she was doing the right thing by this man by forcing him back into the plantation as a loyal beta provider.

Towards the end of the therapy he said that he was “feeling better”, but by the look in his eyes, and the guarded expression on his face, I knew that he was only saying that to protect the female therapist’s feelings. After all, we males have been trained from birth to put women’s needs before our own, right? He presented to the health service with similar problems less than a year later. Apparently the female therapist wasn’t so wise after all. This instance reflects a huge problem in today’s mental health industry. The majority of mental health workers worldwide are female, and it is a concern if a large portion of these females share views of men as disposable, self-sacrificing servants whose problems are solved when they become better beta providers to their families. Gynocentrism needs to end in the mental health sector, where some of the most vulnerable men in society are potentially being harmed rather than helped.