Improving help-seeking by making therapy a safer option. Dr Roger Kingerlee, NHS Foundation Trust.

Keynote speech by Dr Roger Kingerlee, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. Committee member of the Male Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society (BPS). It is a truism of male psychologies that many boys and men have difficulty asking for help at times of distress and - in some cases - delay appropriate help-seeking for months, years, or decades. This keynote explores this phenomenon through the twin prisms of safety, and informational exchange. On the one hand, men often feel confident in making judgments about, and changes in, physical safety. On the other hand, concepts of psychological safety are often unknown to them - but, when men feel their intuitive criteria of safety are not met - men avoid help-seeking, sometimes at almost any cost. The keynote explores what, in the light of clinical practice and theory, can be inferred about psychological safety for men, on the basis of a model of informational exchange. These conclusions are then applied to how, at best - and in the light of developing national and international practice - services for boys and men might be structured and look so as to be maximally enabling for those they seek to serve. Further reading Kingerlee R et al (2019). Reconnection: Designing Interventions and Services with Men in Mind, in The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. London: Palgrave Macmillan Liddon L, Kingerlee R, Seager M & Barry JA (2019). What are the factors that make a male-friendly therapy? in Barry JA, Kingerlee R, Seager MJ and Sullivan L (Eds.) (2019). The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. London: Palgrave Macmillan Barry JA, Kingerlee R, Seager MJ and Sullivan L (Eds.) (2019). The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. London: Palgrave Macmillan IBSN 978-3-030-04384-1 DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1