Over the past two and a half years, Men Minds has been working to understand more about boys and young men’s mental health in Scotland. Men Minds focused on young men because of the poorer outcomes they experience in key mental health indicators such as suicide and substance misuse.
Men Minds has been led by Dr Nina Vaswani of the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ), alongside colleagues from the University of Strathclyde, the Mental Health Foundation, and Monash University, Melbourne Australia. The project was funded by UKRI (MRC, ESRC and AHRC).
Men Minds is a project with a difference, as it was coproduced with a Young People’s Forum of around 10 young men aged 16-24. The Young People’s Forum helped to shape and undertake the research, including conducting interviews, focus groups and surveys with 60 of their peers across Scotland – in art galleries, offices, prisons, parks and online. Utilising peer research, Men Minds engaged with often marginalised young men including: refugees and asylum seekers, young men identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community and young men who had been in conflict with the law.
The young men who took part in Men Minds had diverse backgrounds, but they shared some common experiences. Many of them didn’t believe in traditional notions of masculinity and challenged the assumption that men do not want to talk about mental health. However, these long-held social norms about what it means to be a man, and unsympathetic societal attitudes towards young men, still permeated their everyday environments (families, peers, schools, communities and other institutions), often leading to intense shame and stigma. As a result, young men felt alone and isolated in their mental health.
Men Minds wanted to change this. To normalise conversations about mental health, and reduce stigma, Men Minds has created a comic aimed at boys and young men. Produced in conjunction with comic artists Ell Balson, Megan Sinclair, and UniVerse Comics at the University of Dundee, the stories in the comic are based on real-life experiences that have been shared during the research, although the characters in the comic are fictional.
The comic is published today and is free to download, with hard copies made available to key organisations and individuals working with boys and young men. By sharing these stories, Men Minds hopes to reassure young men that they are not alone.
To raise awareness of young men’s mental health and to help create momentum for change, Men Minds will also be sharing the wider research findings at the Scottish Parliament, in events with practitioners and support organisations, in prisons and in public engagement events across May and June 2025.
“Our Young People’s Forum have been an absolute credit to this project, as have all of the young men who took part. We hope that this comic inspires other young men and helps to open up conversations between young men, their families, peers and others about mental health.” – Dr Nina Vaswani
“I feel like I’m really belonging to something important. I feel like some of the guys had similar experiences to me, I feel like I’m not alone in this.” – One of the Men Minds participants
Men Minds wants this comic to be shared as widely as possible to help end the stigma around talking about mental health for boys and young men. Learn more at the Men Minds website here.