On the surface, Nick Cholmsky looked like a thriving teenager.
Growing up in Ottawa, he says he was athletic and heavily involved in basketball, had friends and a close relationship with his family.
But underneath all that he says he was deeply depressed. The symptoms began in middle school and became much worse by Grade 11.
At 16, he had begun entertaining suicidal thoughts.
Even as his depression and anxiety grew stronger, Cholmsky believed he couldn’t say anything, because “being a man” meant pushing negative thoughts down, and that any sign of weakness would cause him shame.
“Looking back, so much of that [congenial attitude] was for sure just a performance, me acting the way I thought I was supposed to act as a man,” said Cholmsky, now 21.
Earlier this year, the federal government reported on a wide range of data showing that the mental health of young men has deteriorated since 2012. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of men aged 15 to 24 who self-reported mood disorders increased from 11 per cent to 16 per cent, while self-reported generalized anxiety disorders increased from four per cent to 10 per cent.
Those who reported their mental health as “very good” or “excellent” plummeted from 70 per cent to 52 per cent in that same time period.
A separate report shows that men are three times as likely as women to commit suicide and that it’s the second-leading cause of death in boys aged 15 to 34 (after unintentional injuries).
“There’s a common problem everywhere and it’s how men and boys are feeling. And they are not feeling great,” federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel told CBC News.
“There is a lot of anxiety [about] their role as men and boys.”
Research implicates a variety of factors in men’s depression, most prominently social isolation, social media use and online sports betting.
Data from the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows a huge rise in young men calling helplines with gambling addictions. (Health Canada reports men are three times more likely than women to have a gambling problem.)
Canada legalized single-event sports betting in 2021. In 2022, Ontario became the first province to allow private companies to operate alongside government-regulated industry.
A separate report released this month by the Institute for Clinical Evaluation Sciences (ICES) showed that since 2022, emergency room visits for gambling disorders had doubled — largely with young men showing up in a psychological crisis, such as suicidal ideation or psychosis, as a result of gambling losses.
“The gambling stats didn’t surprise me at all when I heard them,” said Cholmsky. “I saw kids in middle school gambling.”
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Whether the stress is the result of gambling or something else, Cholmsky says online messaging encourages boys and men to stay silent.
“When I was going through some of my worst mental health times, I was online a lot and it was really the height of Andrew Tate,” Cholmsky said.
The U.S.-born Tate is one of the best-known influencers in the manosphere, famous for espousing strict rules for being an alpha male, such as maximizing fitness, maintaining control over relationships and emotions and making as much money as possible.
He retains a large following despite being in U.S. detention on multiple criminal charges, including sex trafficking.
“[Tate’s] message, and a lot of that manosphere messaging for boys, is ‘be a man, be tough, make lots of money,'” Cholmsky said.
There are also trends like “looksmaxxing.” Influencer Braden Peters, also known as Clavicular, has amassed a huge following telling young boys sometimes to smash their own faces with hammers to be more conventionally beautiful. His content has more than 40 million likes. Peters was charged with rape last month.
Experts warn dangerous role models like this can have real-world impacts.
“The manosphere is radicalizing young boys who don’t know where they fit — and that should concern us all,” said John Oliffe, Canada research chair in men’s health promotion at the University of British Columbia.
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Oliffe says this was “amplified” by the earliest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic when global lockdowns increased isolation and the loss of social connection. Vulnerable teenagers often found themselves lost online.
“There continues to be a whole world of pain in some of that unregulated content,” Oliffe said.
Adam Kunder, a 33-year-old former firefighter who lives in Toronto, says he also felt he needed to keep his problems quiet. He suffered mental health issues and hit “rock bottom” before beginning to find help in the summer of 2024.
“As a man, you think you are supposed to be strong, push any bad feelings down, suppress depression or sadness or fear,” he said.
Kunder says he has lost multiple friends to suicide and says you never would have known they were suffering.
Kunder said the world is changing in ways that are becoming confusing for many men.
The emphasis on women’s parity in the labour force and society, as well as a greater acceptance of non-traditional gender identities, has upended expectations.
“At one point we knew we were supposed to be the provider and protector, and the idea of ‘toxic masculinity’ wasn’t a thing,” he said. “I think men are really trying to figure out what it means to be a man in today’s world.”
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Oliffe pointed to other troubling patterns for young men.
“There are increasing lower rates of boys heading to universities, and very serious challenges in male-dominated industries such as construction, that as a society, we should not ignore.”
Oliffe said that while the trades offer good careers, they often see high rates of substance use and mental health issues, as the necessary physical labour and harsh working environments can “heighten these risks.”
Oliffe said that in the last decade, there has been “low government investment in men’s mental health.”
“I think the theme of silence is a very regrettable period in history, where on one side we talked about equity and inclusion, and then in effect ostracized 50 per cent of the population,” Oliffe said.
Health Minister Michel said that when she brought this issue to the federal cabinet, she was met with some resistance. Some colleagues told her it took “courage” to broach the mental health of boys and men, given it could even be politically risky to talk publicly about the issue.
“I said ‘courage’? This is not courage. We are ministers of health, it is our job to take care of the entire population,” she said.
“Men don’t know how to ask for help. And when they are struggling, they don’t know how to express it.”
The federal government will soon launch its first-ever mental health strategy for boys and men.
The agency told CBC that some of what they hope to invest in will be “mentorship, peer support, sport and recreation,” while “promoting healthy relationships, positive social norms and safer online environments.”
For Robert Whitley, a men’s health expert and professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, part of the problem is the way society now views masculinity.
“Traditional masculinity has been denigrated in the popular mind whether it’s through the media, through influencers, through commentators,” he said. “The problem sometimes is a lack of masculinity.”
He says there’s a need for positive male role models.
“I’ve said many times before, it’s not a crisis of masculinity, there’s a crisis of mentorship,” said Whitley.
For example, data from Statistics Canada shows only 25 per cent of teachers across elementary and high school systems in Canada are men. And at the organizations that step in to fill the mentorship gap — like the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Canada — 70 per cent of volunteers are women.
“We’re getting young men who are getting to the age of 18, 19, 20, who have never had a male role model in their lives,” Whitley said.
Kunder and Cholmsky both say their mental health began to recover after they started asking for help, and they’re now working to be role models for other young men.
“I feel like it’s my duty in a way to show up for men who are suffering and to hear them out and just let them know it’s all OK,” said Kunder, who coaches and works with other men.
Last month in Ottawa, Cholmsky was awarded top 21 under 21 for his work in mental health advocacy and challenging “harmful stereotypes around masculinity and mental health.”
“We all need to be doing our part to talk about this stuff,” he said.
