Masculinity, emotion regulation, and psychopathology: A critical review and integrated model

Abstract

Relative to girls and women, boys and men experience disproportionate rates of "externalizing" problems (e.g., aggressive behavior, substance use disorders, and antisocial personality disorder). Unfortunately, relatively little is understood about how gender operates in the etiology, expression, and maintenance of men's psychopathology. We argue that this gap in knowledge reflects the challenge of accounting for the dynamic nature of masculinity (i.e., the fact that the influence of masculinity on men's lives varies across context, time, and individuals). Likewise, emotion regulation, the process by which individuals modify their emotions to respond to the varying demands of their environment, is itself an inherently dynamic construct. Difficulty regulating emotion has been identified as a transdiagnostic factor common to a range of psychiatric diagnoses and behavior problems. Integrating the literature on emotion regulation and masculinity, therefore, offers promise for enhancing our ability to understand the effects of gender on men's psychopathology and to alleviate its deleterious consequences. In keeping with this goal, we review and synthesize the available literature on masculinity and emotion regulation into a cross-cutting framework of masculinity and men's psychopathology. Implications are discussed in terms of recommendations for an integrated intervention approach.

Keywords: Emotion regulation; Gender; Masculinity; Psychopathology; Transdiagnostic model.