“Men Need To Go To Therapy” Has Become A Meme, But The Conversation Needs More Nuance

Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a mental illness that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and manic depression, and complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Neither of these diagnoses came quickly. But what stopped me from getting help was not social stigma around these illnesses. It was not the fear of diagnosis, the idea that the label might make me feel othered from myself.

It was the cost.

Mental Healthcare In Australia Is Still Too Expensive

Getting diagnosed with a mental illness and then finding the appropriate treatment for that illness requires seeing a team of professionals regularly. It requires appointments with doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. And despite how frequently Australians will congratulate our healthcare system for being more equitable than that in say, America, our healthcare system does not adequately support ongoing mental health treatment.

We have our 20 annual mental healthcare sessions, sure. But these sessions rarely cover the entirety of the cost of most therapists: the gap between what is covered and what is not can frequently set back patients hundreds of dollars a pop.

Nor are these 20 sessions enough to treat ongoing mental health issues, let alone cover the establishment of new diagnoses; the trials of new means of therapy; the constant, ongoing upkeep of healthy practices.

20 sessions rarely cover the entirety of the cost of most therapists.

A few days ago, I sat down and tried to figure out how much my diagnosis had set me back. I tallied up the psychologist appointments, the meetings with the psychiatrists, the cost of the medication — not covered by the pharmaceutical benefits scheme — that I was started on for a couple of months before the side effects became so overwhelming that I had to go back to the psychiatrist to trial a new medication, which required two follow-ups with doctors in order to check for side effects of the new drug might be having on my thyroid and my heart, appointments that then required blood tests and medical monitoring and an MRI that were only partially covered by Medicare.

When it briefly looked like I might need to go into hospital to monitor the effects of the medication, I was told to try my luck with an overbooked public healthcare system, or pay $5,000 dollars a day for a hospital stay.

The final figure I came up with for the cost of my diagnosis was in the thousands. I am a full-time journalist with a regular salary, and the process of getting help had made a dent in my savings that will take a long time to recover from. There are people on much lower salaries than me — people who are unemployed, who have irregular work, who freelance — to whom such costs would be literally unaffordable.

I drew a line under the figure, and then I opened my phone, and in front of me was a Tweet. “I’m BEGGING men to go to therapy,” it read.

Memes Are Fine. But The Narrative Needs Nuance

This is not, per se, an anti-meme article. Memes are communally-constructed social narratives that reflect the spirit of the times. They reveal things about us; about the way that we think, and act.

Adam Curtis, the documentary filmmaker, recently deplored the lack of artists trying to capture the “feeling of being alive now.” What he failed to consider is that this is exactly what memes do. A thought or a feeling expressed on the internet — whether it communicated in the form of a punchline or an image — only takes off and goes viral when it resonates with some part of us; some understanding about what it means to be alive here, right now, in this era.

But memes do not only reflect the spirit of the times. They are not mere mirrors. They also create social narratives. The social imaginary — the collective pool of images and tropes that we all have access to — is constantly being updated and changed, and memes are one of the ways that change occurs.

Memes do not only reflect the spirit of the times.

The “men need to go to therapy” meme was born as a reflection of a feeling of our time; that the patriarchy restricts the ability of men to talk about their feelings; that therapy has not yet been normalised as a means of confronting deep-seated issues; that too often mental healthcare services go under-utilised. These are important beliefs, and widespread ones. That’s why the meme took off.

But, in its ubiquity, the meme has also distorted the social narrative about therapy away from an understanding of the material conditions of the world in which we — and in particular, Australians — live. The meme has made therapy seem accessible; affordable; as easy to access as water.

It is not. Ongoing, high quality mental healthcare in this country remains accessible to only a select few. That needs to change. And such a change will not occur unless the conversation around therapy remains alive to therapy as it actually stands. The danger is that “men need to go to therapy” will distort, rather than reflect, the feelings of the age.

We don’t combat the narrative by criticising memes themselves. We combat that narrative by keeping the conversation nuanced, by holding two truths in our head at once. Firstly, that therapy is necessary, that men do need to remain open to healthcare services, that in a perfect world mental healthcare would be entirely free, and accessible to all.

And secondly, that, simply put, we do not yet live in that perfect world.

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Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.