At last, the twelfth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) produced guidelines in late 2018 on how to conduct therapy with boys and men. Some parts of the guidelines are, in my opinion, welcome (Guideline 9 has lots of good advice), but other parts of the guidelines were perplexingly ideological and caused a wave of critical reaction, including my own blog.

This is the eleventh blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. People go to therapy usually because they feel distressed and are seeking professional advice from someone who is skilled in therapy and will care about their feelings. 

This is the ninth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. Given generations of trauma in South Africa, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) set up a psychology degree which equipped graduates with practical counselling skills based on contemporary Western ideas. Sounds like a fantastic idea, so what could possibly go wrong?

This is the fifth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology special issue on male psychology. Yesterday’s blog demonstrated that one of the greatest sources of pain for men was not being allowed to see their children.

This is the fourth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. Yesterday’s blog showed the impact of domestic abuse risk on separated fathers. Todays blog highlights a deeply personal hurt that many separated dads experience – restrictions on seeing their children. 

This is the second blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. “On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two turtle doves”. It is easy to see that some of the greatest novels – like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – are said to have been some of the greatest acts of catharsis for their authors.

This is the first blog (after the intro) in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”.  The first paper in the special issue of the Psychreg Journal of Psychology is a peach rather than a pear (if that doesn’t sound too much like Alan Partridge!)

Last week saw the publication of 12 new papers on male psychology. Each article is free to download at the Psychreg Journal of Psychology website. In the first week there has already been over 600 downloads. So why all of the interest in these papers? Well, over the next two weeks you can find out because I will be posting the abstract and short commentary on each paper, and the link to the full article.

About a third of men experience difficulty in getting or maintaining an erection, and this percentage increases in older men. Around 85% of men find that sildenifal (Viagra) improves their erections. This is a good success rate, but it doesn’t address any underlying psychological issues the man might have in relation to sex or relationships.

If you are like me and became a new dad in the past year or so, you may well have found yourself with unprecedented amounts of time at home with a baby. For most people this will be a challenge and even trigger depression (see helpline details below), but in fact there can be a silver lining, or even golden opportunity, in being locked down with baby.

A recent meta-synthesis of 13 studies looked at the experiences of new dads of babies up to 12 months old (Shorey & Ang, 2019). Three themes emerged:

Like 8% of men and 0.5% of women, I am colour blind. Being colour blind has a significant impact on Quality of Life (Barry et al, 2017), creating problems in everyday activities such as understanding coloured graphs (in lectures and textbooks) and maps (e.g. the London Underground map).

Research shows that one of the key predictors of psychological well-being is job satisfaction. When people are stressed at work, this not only impacts their productivity but can make the other areas of their life miserable too.

1/ Tailor therapy to the client’s personality: Most therapists will agree that therapy should meet the needs and capabilities of the client. An extension of this principal was created by US psychiatrist Dr Milton Erikson, who is sometimes called ‘the father of modern hypnosis’.