Men’s Mental Health and Loneliness at Work

Two years ago, I wrote for the first time about a topic close to my heart;  men’s mental health and how it shows up in the workplace. At the time, it felt like we were only just beginning to understand the extent to which men’s mental health is shaped by daily routines, relationships, and environments. Since then, I do think things have started to shift. More people are talking about it. The stigma is somewhat loosening… slowly. 

But there’s still a long way to go.

This year though, I’m focussing more on one particular strand: loneliness, and how it intertwines with men’s wellbeing at work.

Redefining Loneliness

Oxford Dictionary defines loneliness as “sadness because one has no friends or company.”

But that definition feels incomplete. Loneliness, at least the way I’ve come to understand it, is not about being alone per se, but about being unseen. It’s a feeling of isolation that creeps in when the connections around you don’t feel meaningful or mutual. You can have a busy social calendar, a bustling office, or even a loving family, and still feel completely disconnected. The absence of deep, authentic connection - that’s loneliness. 

In the UK, up to 8 million men say they feel lonely at least once a week, and more than one in ten (insert source) admit they’d never tell anyone about it. These numbers are alarming, but they’re not surprising. Because when you look closely, you start to see the cultural scaffolding that holds it all up.

The Quiet Crisis of Male Connection

From a young age, men are taught to be strong, to be smart, to be capable - which are of course incredibly admirable traits. There’s nothing wrong with teaching young boys and teenagers to value these, where we can go wrong, is when we fail to stress the importance of empathy, connection and emotionality, especially for men. Oftentimes this vulnerability is mistaken for weakness. Asking for help can feel like failing to upkeep that ever-valued strength. So instead of reaching out, we can retreat; behind humour and work. Over time, this emotional distance becomes a habit. Friendships thin out. Work becomes the primary source of purpose and validation.

But the workplace isn’t always designed to meet emotional needs and can amplify isolation.

How often do men at work truly talk about how they’re doing beyond the polite “Yeah, good mate, busy as ever”? How often do we see men connecting beyond surface-level banter, or showing the full spectrum of what they feel; stress, anxiety, fear, grief?

Too rarely. And yet those are the very conversations that build the trust and empathy needed to combat loneliness.

Loneliness in the Workplace

Workplaces are complex social systems. They can offer community, belonging, and shared purpose, or they can heighten disconnection. For those who may already struggle to build or maintain close relationships outside of work, the office can become both a lifeline and a sort of pressure cooker.

Remote and hybrid work models, while beneficial in many ways, have blurred boundaries and reduced casual social contact. For some men, this means less human connection altogether. For others, it has exposed how transactional many workplace relationships actually were.

And when you add the cultural expectations - to be resilient, to not “burden” others, to “get on with it”, it creates a dangerous loop. Men withdraw because they feel disconnected, and that withdrawal deepens the loneliness.

Relearning How to Connect

Addressing male loneliness isn’t just about setting up another social club or adding a wellbeing policy. It’s about creating environments both in and outside of work where men feel genuinely safe to open up. That starts with small, consistent acts of honesty. It’s asking “how are you?” and meaning it. It’s giving someone the space to answer without rushing to fix them. It’s talking openly about your own struggles so that others feel less alone in theirs. We need to normalise male friendship that goes beyond banter. We need to recognise that strength and softness can coexist.

At work, that can look like leaders who share their own mental health stories, managers who model empathy rather than endurance, or teams that treat check-ins as genuine conversations rather than tick-box exercises, all of which actually improve efficiency in the long-run.

Meeting Men Where They’re At

When I first wrote about men’s mental health two years ago, I called it “Meeting Men Where They’re At.” I do still believe that title holds weight. Because it’s not about telling men to feel or behave differently overnight - it’s about meeting them in the spaces they already are; at work, at the gym, in the pub, even online, and gently widening the conversation. Change won’t come from grand gestures, It will come from quiet culture shifts embodied by a couple honest chats, one small connection, some sort of alleviation of pressure.

Loneliness at times is inevitable, but this isn’t always the case, we can redefine strength and make a whole lot of people, much less lonely.

From Ethan Phoenix Kentish