About the report

Equal access to good health, health care and social care is one of the goals of official Nordic co-operation in the area of gender equality. Gender equality work that focuses on men and masculinity is one of the strategic areas of intervention in official Nordic co-operation in the policy area of gender equality, which emphasises that men and masculinity issues need to be explicitly highlighted in work to promote gender equality. The Norwegian Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2020 therefore initiated a project to shed light on young men’s mental ill-health in the Nordic countries.

The Nordic Council of Ministers’ co-operation body Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK), located at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research in Gothenburg, was commissioned to produce an overview of research that would document and analyse the knowledge that exists in the Nordic countries, and that would enable this knowledge to be shared between the Nordic countries and across different areas of knowledge. The research overview has been written by Eva Randell, Associate Professor of Social Work at Uppsala University.

The overall purpose of the overview is to describe current knowledge about young men’s mental health problems by examining what causes these problems and their consequences. The overview is intended to highlight knowledge about young men’s mental health in relation to current conditions and challenges in schools and the workplace in the Nordic countries in particular. The study is also intended to highlight knowledge about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on young men’s mental ill-health, where increased unemployment, distance teaching and isolation have risked reinforcing negative spirals in mental well-being.

The research overview contains three themes that are described in detail below:

To highlight knowledge about young men’s mental health in relation to current conditions and challenges in schools and the workplace in the Nordic countries in particular.
To highlight knowledge about the consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on young men’s mental ill-health.
To demonstrate the relationships between ill-health and prevailing masculinity norms, and to investigate and show how to create alternative, more health-promoting masculinity norms and what this requires.

The overview begins with an introduction to the terms health/ill-health, and masculinity in relation to health. Then follows a section on methodology and the search terms and databases used and the search process. The results from the searches are presented in two parts: young men’s mental health in relation to the current conditions and challenges in schools and the workplace in the Nordic countries, and the impacts that the pandemic has had on young men’s mental ill-health. The concluding part of the report summarises and discusses the results and presents the knowledge gaps.

The author would like to thank:

Alena Lindfors and Ulrika Gabrielsson, librarians at Dalarna University

Librarians at KvinnSam in the University of Gothenburg Library

Camilla Udo, Associate Professor of Social Work at Dalarna University

Elin Engström, NIKK at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research.

Kajsa Widegren, NIKK at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research

Maria Grönroos, NIKK at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research