In 2023, about 17 percent of American men saw a mental health professional. For women it was over 28 percent. Among men living with a diagnosable mental illness, fewer than half received any treatment at all. And the cost of that silence shows up in the starkest number we have: men die by suicide at roughly four times the rate of women, accounting for nearly 80 percent of suicide deaths in this country.
Even at the moment of crisis, the pattern holds. The Crisis Text Line handled about 1.5 million conversations in 2025; fewer than one in five of the people reaching out were men. The report’s explanation was blunt: men see asking for help as weakness.
I named my practice after a story that says the opposite.
The one who came back
In Luke 17, ten men with leprosy call out to Jesus from a distance. All ten are healed. Nine keep walking. One – a Samaritan, the outsider of the group – turns around, comes back, and falls at Jesus’ feet. And it is only to that one man that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” That goes deeper than his skin. It points to a restoration of the inner life.
All ten got the healing. Only one got the wholeness.
Here is what strikes me about that story after sitting with a lot of men in a counseling room: the nine were not bad men. They did exactly what most of us do. They got functional again and went back to their lives. Symptoms managed, crisis over, nothing else to see. The one who returned did something men are trained not to do – he turned around, walked toward someone, and acknowledged out loud what he had been carrying and what had happened to him.
That is not weakness. Nine men kept their composure and their distance. One man was willing to be seen. He is the one the story calls well.
Functional is not the same as well
Most men I talk to are functional. They go to work, they provide, they hold it together in public. The struggle lives underneath – the short fuse their kids are learning to walk around, the marriage that has gone quiet, the habit they promised themselves they would quit this year, the 2 a.m. question of whether any of it matters. Functional. Not well.
Our culture tells men the goal is to get back to functional as fast as possible, alone if you can manage it. Scripture tells a different story: the deeper work – the beliefs, wounds, and patterns that shape how a man moves through the world – happens when he turns toward what is true and says it to someone. That has been my experience professionally as well as personally. The turning around is the treatment.
If you are one of the nine
No shame in it. But if part of you has been circling the idea of talking to someone – and men usually circle it for months or years before acting – consider this your invitation to turn around. It costs you one conversation to find out what the returning is about. Reach out here, or read what to expect first if that helps.
If the weight is heavier than an appointment can wait for: call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, free and confidential, any hour. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.