Yesterday, Spittin' Chiclets, one of the biggest hockey podcasts in the world, posted a clip of Michael Landsberg talking about mental health. His message was simple: talk to someone. See your family doctor. It's ok to not be ok.
The clip pulled over 163,000 views. Nearly 500 likes. And then there were the comments.
One commenter called therapy "a joke" and said it "only works for people who have a lower IQ." Another dismissed the entire concept of available resources, writing: "The idea that 'RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE' is a myth. Everyone says 'Ask for help.' 'Get help.' 'Resources.' 'Let's talk.' The reality is that it is not that simple."
These weren't trolls buried at the bottom. They were among the most visible replies. And they tell us something important: the stigma around men and mental health isn't fading as fast as we'd like to believe.
I Grew Up in That Culture
I spent years playing competitive basketball and baseball. I know the locker room. I know the unspoken rules: don't complain, don't show weakness, handle your problems quietly or don't handle them at all. That mentality doesn't disappear when you stop playing. It follows you into your career, your relationships, and the way you raise your kids.
For a lot of men who grew up in sports, the idea of sitting across from a therapist feels like admitting defeat. It contradicts everything you were rewarded for: toughness, stoicism, pushing through pain without flinching. When the culture you were shaped by treats vulnerability as a liability, asking for help doesn't just feel uncomfortable. It feels wrong.
That conditioning is why comments like the ones on that post exist. The man calling therapy a joke isn't making an intellectual argument. He's repeating a script he was handed decades ago. And he's not alone.
The Real Barrier Isn't Information
We live in a time where mental health awareness campaigns are everywhere. Athletes are speaking out. Podcasts are dedicating segments to it. The information is more available than ever. But awareness hasn't solved the problem because the barrier was never a lack of information. It's identity.
For many men, especially those who came up through sports, military service, blue-collar work, or any environment that equated toughness with value, seeking help threatens their sense of who they are. It's not that they don't know therapy exists. It's that everything they believe about being a man tells them they shouldn't need it.
That's a harder problem to solve than access or awareness. You can't fact-check someone out of an identity they've built over a lifetime.
What Actually Moves the Needle
One comment on that Chiclets post stood out from the rest. A man wrote: "Family, friends, doctor, therapist, even people who were only FB friends were a great help to me."
No posturing. No debate. Just a man saying, plainly, that he got help and it mattered. That kind of comment does more to chip away at stigma than any campaign ever could. Because men don't change their minds about therapy by reading a brochure. They change their minds when a man they respect tells them it worked.
That's the shift that needs to happen, and it's happening slowly. Not through slogans, but through individual men being honest about what they've been through and what helped them come out the other side.
The Stigma Won't End on Its Own
If you read that comment section and felt frustrated, good. It means you see the gap between where the conversation is and where it needs to be. But frustration alone doesn't close that gap. Men talking openly about therapy does. Men refusing to perform toughness at the expense of their own wellbeing does. And men having access to therapists who actually understand them does.
That's why I built Anchor Men's Therapy: to connect men with male therapists who get it, without the waiting rooms, the stigma, or the feeling of being misunderstood. Every session is online. Every therapist on our team is male. And the first step is just a conversation.
If you've been on the fence, or if you're the guy who would have written one of those dismissive comments a few years ago and something has since shifted inside you, that shift matters. Don't ignore it.
