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There are growing concerns about young men’s mental health (see Aarons, 2025) and its impact on individuals and society (see Over et al., 2025a), with poor mental health being a potential risk factor for a range of undesirable outcomes, including susceptibility to potentially harmful online content (see Commission for Countering Extremism, 2024).

This has led to increased awareness of the need to encourage men to express their emotions and talk about mental health more openly, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently told the launch of the . Evidence-based lessons provide a key opportunity to teach boys from an early age how to notice, name, manage and express their emotions, and the benefits associated with doing so. If delivered consistently, these may facilitate and sustain salutary changes for future generations of boys and young men.

‘Evidence-based lessons provide a key opportunity to teach boys from an early age how to notice, name, manage and express their emotions, and the benefits associated with doing so.’

Longitudinal research conducted in the UK and Australia (see O’Connor et al., 2022), has found that boys have lower mental health competencies (MHC) than girls between the ages of 4 and 15. MHC are strengths that help us to navigate life’s inevitable challenges (Hope et al., 2019). They include a range of social and emotional skills which help us to set goals, direct attention and manage emotions (self-regulation); establish and maintain friendships, cooperate and compromise (social competence); and express empathy, kindness and compassion (prosocial behaviour). As pupils age, the range and complexity of these skills need to develop in line with the increasingly demanding psychosocial challenges they experience.

It has been found that children with higher MHC are less likely to experience psychological distress (O’Connor et al., 2025), and that they are less likely to smoke cigarettes (Pearce et al., 2021), binge alcohol, try illegal drugs or engage in antisocial behaviour (Rougeaux et al., 2020).

A core component of all social and emotional skills frameworks is emotional awareness (CFEC, 2025). However, as highlights, social and cultural norms create a potential barrier to boys developing greater emotional awareness, especially as they grow older, with traditional masculine norms often discouraging the acknowledgement or expression of uncomfortable emotions – encapsulated in phrases such as ‘man up’.

Online misogynistic content, commonplace within the ‘manosphere’ (Over et al., 2025b), compounds this by stigmatising and expressing contempt for mental health difficulties (Over et al., 2025a). To rectify this, it is critical that boys grow up with a clear understanding that there are well-established benefits to emotional awareness, and that mental health difficulties are not a sign of weakness and should not be ignored.

In England, PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education offers a unique and valuable space for pupils to be taught social and emotional skills. PSHE education is the school curriculum subject in England dedicated to supporting children’s safety, health, wellbeing and preparation for life and work. When timetabled and taught effectively, it can play a key role in supporting pupils mental health (PHE, 2021), as well as their overall development. For instance, PSHE education can provide a safe and dedicated space for pupils to learn about emotions (DfE, 2024) and how to notice, name, manage and express them healthily.

In collaboration with the University of York, the , the official body and subject association for PSHE education, has developed – an evidence-based mental health curriculum for 4-to-11-year-olds. This curriculum is informed by child development, psychology and neuroscience (see Dorjee, 2024), and pioneers a novel and promising approach to supporting pupils to develop greater emotional awareness.

In addition to supporting pupils to broaden their emotional vocabulary, develop interoceptive awareness and consider how emotions may vary among people and across situations, the curriculum explicitly teaches children some of the evidence-based reasons why emotional awareness is important. For instance, pupils are taught that noticing and accurately naming emotions can:

• dampen their intensity, making them slightly easier to manage (Torre & Lieberman, 2018)
• make it easier for us to navigate our experiences, like using a map (Bennett et al., 2021)
• help us to recognise when support is needed (Dunning et al., 2022).

The curriculum also introduces developmentally appropriate emotion regulation strategies, as better emotion regulation is associated with experiencing fewer mental health difficulties and higher subjective wellbeing (Lereya et al., 2022).

‘Teaching pupils that there are objectively good reasons to notice and name emotions may help to protect them from unhelpful messages about emotions as they grow older.’

Teaching pupils that there are objectively good reasons to notice and name emotions may help to protect them from unhelpful messages about emotions as they grow older, and contribute towards raising future generations of boys and young men who recognise that it is healthy to notice, acknowledge and name emotions, and to find adaptive ways of managing or expressing them in an effort to prevent them from escalating and causing individual and societal harms.

We welcome investigations from the educational research community into this novel approach to supporting pupils to understand the importance of developing greater emotional awareness, and are keen to discover whether this offers a more effective way to convince boys of the value of being in tune with your emotions, especially if these messages are championed as part of a whole-school approach to promoting mental health.

References

Aarons, E. (2025, March 19). Gareth Southgate rails against ‘callous toxic influencers’ in Dimbleby Lecture. Guardian.

Bennett, M. P., Knight, R., Patel, S., So, T., Dunning, D., Barnhofer, T., Smith, P., Kuyken, W., ÌýFord, T., & Dalgleish, T. (2021). Decentering as a core component in the psychological treatment and prevention of youth anxiety and depression: A narrative review and insight report. Translational Psychiatry, 11, 288 (2021).

Centre for Early Childhood [CFEC]. (2025). The Shaping Us Framework.

Commission for Countering Extremism. (2024). Predicting harm among incels (involuntary celibates): the roles of mental health, ideological belief and social networking (accessible). Ìý

Department for Education {DfE]. (2024). Teaching relationships education to prevent sexual abuse: Research report.

Dorjee, D. (2024). Conceptualising child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing neurodevelopment: An integrative brain networks framework. University of York.

Dunning, D. L., Wright, G., Bennett, M. P., Knight, R., & Dalgleish, T. (2022). What role does emotional granularity play in adolescent depression and anxiety? A scoping review.

Hayes, D., Deniz, E., Nisbet, K., Thompson, A., March, A., Mason, C., Santos, J., Mansfield, R., Ashworth, E., Moltrect, B., Liverpool, S., Merrick, H., Boehnke, J., Humphrey, N., Stallard, P., Patalay, P., & Deighton, J. (2025). Universal, school-based, interventions to improve emotional outcomes in children and young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 4, 1526840.

Hope, S., Rougeaux, E., Deighton, J., Law, C., & Pearce, A. (2019). Associations between mental health competence and indicators of physical health and cognitive development in eleven year olds: Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. BMC Public Health, 19, 1461.

Lereya, S. T., Patalay, P., & Deighton, J. (2022). Predictors of mental health difficulties and subjective wellbeing in adolescents: A longitudinal study. JCPP Advances, 2(2), e12074.

O’Connor, M., O’Connor, E. Olsson, C., Lange, K. Downes, M., Moreno, Betancur, M. …, & Hope, S. (2025). Beyond disorder: Positive mental health in adolescence. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

O’Connor, M., Arnup, S. J., Mensah, F., Olsson, C., Goldfeld, S., Viner, R. M., & Hope, S. (2022). Natural history of mental health competence from childhood to adolescence. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 76, 133–139.

Over, H., Bunce, C., Konu, D., & Zendle, D. (2025a). Editorial Perspective: What do we need to know about the manosphere and young people’s mental health? Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 30(3), 272–274.

Over, H., Bunce, C., Baggaley, J., & Zendle, D. (2025b). Understanding the influence of online misogyny in schools from the perspective of teachers. PLoS ONE, 20(2), e0299339.

Pearce, A., Rougeaux, E., Deighton, J., Viner, R. M., Law, C., & Hope, S. (2021). Can mental health competence reduce the higher risk of smoking initiation among teenagers with parents who smoke? European Journal of Public Health, 31(4), 756–763.

Public Health England [PHE]. (2021). Promoting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing: A whole school or college approach.

Rougeaux, E., Hope, S. Viner, R. M., Deighton, J., Law, C., & Pearce, A. 2020). Is mental health competence in childhood associated with health risk behaviors in adolescence? Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 67(5), 677–684.

Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124.