If you want to understand why so many younger men resist the idea of therapy, even couples therapy, even when their own anxiety is at record highs, BetterHelp’s 2026 State of Stigma Report is a useful place to start.
The report, based on responses from 2,000 U.S. adults gathered in March 2026, found that 93% of Gen Z men report experiencing anxiety, the highest figure of any generation or gender measured. That number steps down with age: 86% for Millennial men, 82% for Gen X men, and 54% for Baby Boomer men.
High Distress, Low Entry
The report’s authors frame this as a persistent irony. Men and women report similar levels of anxiety and depression, but the paths diverge sharply once symptoms show up. Women more often seek professional care. Men more often look for something else.
What’s driving that isn’t one single barrier but a stack of them. Roughly a third of all respondents said they fear judgment for seeking care. A quarter said they specifically worry mental health treatment could affect their job, a concern that climbs among younger workers. Add scheduling friction, cited by 32%, and cost, cited by 52%, and traditional therapy starts to look like a format built around exactly the obstacles men report most.
Where Men Are Actually Going Instead
Rather than pushing through those barriers, the report found a meaningful share of men routing around them entirely. Eighteen percent of men now say they’ve turned to AI tools for mental health support, above the overall national average, and 14% specifically for substance or addiction concerns.
Among men who’ve used AI this way, over half cite affordability and nearly half cite the appeal of immediate, in-the-moment availability. That combination removes the two obstacles men name most often: cost and scheduling. Dr. Mona Barman, BetterHelp’s Director of Care Transformation, described the appeal as filling the gap for whatever “doesn’t wait for a therapy session.”
The report is careful not to oversell this shift. Nearly three-quarters of respondents say they’d never trust AI more than a licensed professional, and close to half believe AI tools work best paired with real clinical care, not as a replacement for it.
The Counterintuitive Finding: Men Actually Like Groups
One of the report’s more surprising results cuts against a common assumption. Thirty-one percent of male respondents said group therapy could be beneficial to them, compared with 20% of women.
Dr. Russell DuBois, a VP of clinical quality at BetterHelp, ties this to the specific comfort of shared, peer-referenced experience: being around men they respect who are also struggling can lower the perceived stakes of admitting difficulty in a way one-on-one sessions don’t.
For a partner trying to understand why their significant other resists a therapist’s office but might open up in a different format, that distinction matters. The resistance isn’t necessarily to help itself. It’s often to a specific structure of help that was never built with how men tend to process distress in mind.