How can we better engage boys in mental health care?

In contrast to physical health problems which are more prevalent later in life, the most common time to develop a mental illness is during childhood and adolescence (McGorry et al. 2011; Oh et al. 2014). Yet, for a variety of reasons, young people with mental health problems often do not receive appropriate care. One of the innovative ways in which Australia has addressed the challenge of improving access to mental health services for young people is through the internationally respected ‘Headspace’ program, which now comprises 55 well resourced, youth friendly centres serving 12–25-year-olds across the nation (McGorry et al. 2013). The program commenced in 2006 and, despite its apparent success, recent research by Headspace highlights the need to engage boys better in mental health care, given that twice as many girls than boys have accessed its services (Rickwood et al. 2014). Such data is consistent with historically low help-seeking trends among adolescent males (Vogel et al. 2011). However, when general practice prescribing patterns to children aged 3–14 years are examined, a different pattern emerges. It turns out that Australian boys under the age of 14 years use the prescribing services of general practitioners for mental health medication at triple the rate of young girls (Karanges et al. 2014).