Mental health statistics: men and women

Mental health problems affect both men and women, but not in equal measure.

  • In England, in 2014, one in six adults had a common mental health problem: about one in five women and one in eight men. From 2000 to 2014, rates of common mental health problems in England steadily increased in women and remained largely stable in men.1
  • In 2018, there were 6,507 suicides registered in the UK2, and in 2019, there were 5,691 suicides registered in England and Wales. Of these, three-quarters were among men, which has been the case since the mid-1990s2,3
  • Three times as many men as women die by suicide.4
  • Men aged 40-49 have the highest suicide rates in the UK5.
  • Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women according to the Government’s national wellbeing survey6 .
  • Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men7.
  • Nearly three-quarters of adults who go missing are men.4
  • 87% of rough sleepers are men.4
  • Men are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol, and three times as likely to report frequent drug use.4
  • Men are more likely to be compulsorily detained (or ‘sectioned’) for treatment than women.8
  • Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime (1.5 more likely than women).9
  • Men make up the vast majority of the prison population.​ There are high rates of mental health problems and increasing rates of self-harm in prisons.4 
  • Women between the ages of 16 and 24 are almost three times as likely (26%) to experience a common mental health issue as males of the same age (9%).10
  • Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety as men.11
  • 25.7% of women and 9.7% of men aged 16-24 report having self-harmed at some point in their life.12

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References

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