Addressing the Specific Behavioral Health Needs of Men
Addressing the Specific Behavioral Health Needs of Men
The physical, psychological, social, and spiritual effects of substance use and abuse on men can be quite different from the effects on women, and those differences have implications for treatment in behavioral health settings.
Men are also affected by social and cultural forces in different ways than women, and physical differences between the genders influence substance use and recovery as well.
Historically, standard behavioral health services for substance abuse have been designed with male clients in mind. As the number of women presenting for substance abuse services increased, clinicians began to understand that women had different treatment needs than men, related to differences in their patterns of substance use and their perceptions of both the problem of substance abuse and its treatment.
Researchers began to investigate how standard substance abuse treatment in a variety of behavioral health settings can be altered to improve outcomes for women.
