We hope you will join us for our Summer Institute. The boy crisis–and thus a national safety crisis–will get discussed at this Zoom Training event as we all work together to protect our children–and to understand why they do what they do.

Because I have been interviewed a great deal over the last two weeks about the shootings, I have been working to give a realistic picture of what we must do to help our nation and our children. Today’s blog shares with you where I believe we are now. I hope you’ll comment back to me at our Summer Institute and/or via info@gurianinstitute.com. –Michael Gurian

The Boy Crisis

Public awareness of the boy crisis began in the 1990s with the school shootings in Springfield and Columbine.  After the Columbine shooting while doing media that I first used the term “the boy crisis.” A number of us in the field have used it since.  Already back then, we were asked as experts to study the profiles of the shooters.  The profiles did not fit (nor do they fit now) a single causal factor (i.e. sexually abused boy, drug-addicted mother, fatherless boy), but did include these elements and a number of others depending on the boy (see below).

That said, one profile did fit all shooters and still does: the killer is a male who suffers from male-type depression (male mental illness) and acquires or is provided with a dangerous gun. Unlike generalized or female-type depression, male covert depression is often hidden behind male substance use, anger/rage, social isolation, and threats/follow through utilizing weapons.  For reasons I will discuss here, females are not as likely to kill others or themselves with guns as males when depressed/mentally ill.

The Short Term Crisis

Before going deeper into our national boy crisis as a whole, I hope our nation will look carefully at the short term solution to these tragic deaths: invest in male mental illness treatment (especially new understanding and treatment for male-type depression) while simultaneously ending the social practice of giving mentally ill, depressed boys and men guns.

There are three major areas of gun deaths (not including accidents) we track:

1. Mass shootings like Uvalde, Tulsa, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Vegas, Buffalo–these make up the smallest number statistically but a huge number tragically;
   2. Daily gun deaths in inner cities and impoverished communities–these make up a much a larger number of gun deaths statistically but with the tragedy less noticed in public media; and
   3. Suicide-by-gun which makes up the largest number of gun deaths statistically in the U.S.

While some advocacy groups do not like to say “mental illness is a cause of the violence” for political reasons, a person who kills innocent people outside of war time is suffering from mental illness.  But if we don’t want to call it “mental illness,” then we must at least understand it as male-type depression or male dysphoria.  This depression/dysphoria is based in the male brain, male biochemistry, male trauma, and male developmental deficits.  For more on male-type depression/dysphoria, please see Saving Our Sons and here:

https://gurianinstitute.com/depressed-american-boy-diagnosing-treating-male-type-depression/.

I will also discuss this type of depression further in a moment.  Meanwhile, because we cannot immediately and universally cure mental illness in the short term, we must move quickly to switch our nation’s gun policies away from the politically polarizing “gun control” concept to the already popular “gun safety” approach.  Our legislators will hopefully study and enact some of these ideas.

1. Ban AR 15s (except for police/military) and other similar weapons that possess no home or hunting need.  Even the inventor of the assault rifle has agreed that it was meant for military use, not household use.
   2. Lower the number of bullets in magazines, potentially to ten.
   3. Ban many or most gun purchases for people younger than 21, but let parents purchase and secure the gun so the young person can use it with the family for hunting and the family can use it for protection.
   4. Institute 30 day background checks on all gun purchases, including psych evaluations; when the evaluation shows a red flag, the gun purchase is postponed or voided and treatment of the person required.

This gun safety list is not an exhaustive one but fits with the developmental/psychological realization that the killings we abhor happen with ill males who possess a killing machine: the gun.  If my suggestions seem wrong to you, please suggest right ones. To stay with the status quo and keep doing nothing regarding better gun safety around mentally ill and depressed boys and men is clearly not working.

Simultaneous to gun safety legislation and enforcement, we will need to invest nationally in male mental health.  This will mean that academe, government, media, schools, families, communities must be financially equipped to deal with the millions of dysphoric and depressed males we have in our society presently.  We must invest at a systemic level which means training thousands more therapists than we have now, and specifically training them in the male brain and male dysphoria.  Most mental health practitioners do not learn about the male brain (nature, nurture, and culture) in graduate school.  Except for attempts in the VA to focus on creating male mental health systems, we do not have a national system for dealing with male mental health.  If we create that system in a similar way to creating Women’s Hospitals and Women and Children’s systems, we will do a great deal to solve the issues we face.

The Larger Developmental Crisis

We can provide gun safety legislation and we can invest in male mental health relatively soon, if we have the courage to do so; in so doing, we will also deal with the question: “Where is our male mental health crisis coming from?”  First and foremost, we will need to agree that there is such a thing as male-type depression/male dysphoria.   Gender politics in the Big Three (academe, government, media) get in the way of making crucial distinctions between male/female, women/men, boys/girls.  Some academics go so far as to say that there is no such things as “sexual dimorphism” (male/female brain), despite the millions of brain scans all around them that reveal male and female brains in living color.

If we are still arguing as a society about whether “male” or “man” or “boy” actually exist as discrete parts of human nature, we will remain paralyzed to look at the kind of depression our nation is facing tragically right now.   If we will have the courage and common sense to look at and admire male and female as they are, we can understand who we are, including who the people are that kill us.

Looking at male/female does not negate affirming bridge brain and gender nonconforming children and adults.  Male/female is a matter of sex; gender is a fluid social construct.  Sex is inborn in body and brain and affects everything, including depression and dysphoria.  Gender can also affect these things, but sex comes first.  For more on this, please see:

She, He, X, They: The Amazing Minds of Boys and Girls

When we do look carefully at “male” and “female,” we get better at understanding male-type depression.  It involves:

1. General dysphoria.
2. Male-Type dysphoria.
3. Often, substance/alcohol use and/or other addiction (porn, gaming, gambling, internet, social media) triggered by gene expression and trauma.
4. The depression/anxiety becomes covert (hidden behind the addiction or other high risk behavior) rather than overt (females tend more toward overt depression, males more toward covert).
5. Male hormone involvement, e.g. low testosterone (more on this in a moment).
6. Psychotic episodes linked to lack of frontal lobe connectivity in the male brain, i.e. lack of self-regulation and impulse control when violent impulses present to the depressed brain.
7. For some depressed males, developmental psychopathology is the result, and this will often culminate in spontaneous or planned conquest scenarios and violence.  These males experience the disease of violence (the AMA decided to call violence a disease starting more than 30 years ago).

Millions of males suffer covert depression today:  this is a developmental crisis for families and society.   Why do they suffer this?  Why so many males depressed?  Why so much disease of violence in America today?  Why tens of thousands of overdose deaths, tens of thousands of male suicides, thousands of homicides per year caused by males?

The answers are in three sources:  nature, nurture, and culture.

The Causes-of-the-Cause

If the overt cause of much male violence today is male mental illness, usually male dysphoria/covert depression in possession of a gun, the causes of this cause can be delineated this way.  Each area must be dealt with in our society if we are to decrease the amount of male mental illness.  (Dealing with all of this will also help our girls, women, trans, and gender non-conforming–everyone needs us to focus on these things–but because males are doing the killing I will stay with a focus on males here).

Nature

Molecular attacks on the male brain and cellular structure exist environmentally via pollution, endocrine disruptors, fertilizer, pesticides, plastics, and junk food.  These attacks occur in mom’s egg and dad’s sperm (altering gene expression in the child there already) as well as inside the boy’s gene expression system during his lifespan.  As male testosterone-based molecules mutate, they often do so in ways that lead to increases in male-type depression and male incidence of brain disorders (e.g. ASD) as well as general male mental illness and the disease of violence.

It is crucial we remember:  as a result of molecular attacks, male testosterone levels are 20 – 30% lower in cellular quantity than 30 years ago.  This means male brains today are set up for male-type depression and the disease of violence even more than they were 30 years ago.   Contrary to popular memes and jibes, too-low testosterone does not equal lower violence rates; in fact, in many cases, testosterone levels that are too low for the male’s cellular structure (which is built to utilize testosterone at normal levels) will lead to more depression in males and, thus, more violence.

But testosterone is, like all of human nature and male nature, not uncomplicated.   Studies show that when a boy has an active father especially during puberty and adolescence, his testosterone quantity diminishes slightly than the boy who is not fathered.  Nature appears to do this in boys to help boys become nurturers and fathers themselves one day.  However, studies also show, that while “slightly lower” is fine, “too low” is dangerous, as we’ve noted.

We need to commit to understanding male nature throughout our society better than we do now; to do this, we will need to take into account nature-based issues despite that they are subtle to discern.  In so doing, we will nurture males differently than we do now.

Nurture

We will need to nurture the necessary and admirable nature of males.  Right now, though, many academic institutions, schools, health systems, neighborhoods, legal systems, homes, and communities are mismatched with male brains, male biochemistry, and male nature.

For instance, schools are filled with wonderful teachers, but they did not learn about the male brain before starting to teach; as a result, the school is a good place for most females and not so good for many males.

Most therapists did not learn about the male brain during graduate school and training; as a result, our therapy and social service offices are set up to have patients sit for 50 minutes and tell us what they feel–a good fit for the female brain but a bad fit for most male brains.

When these systems do look at males as a group to try to help them, they tend to default toward, “if only men would cry more and talk about their feelings more, they’d be fine,”  or “he won’t tell me what he’s feeling, that’s his defect,” or “toxic masculinity is the problem.”  Not boys and men crying more, nor males talking about feelings more, nor denigration of masculinity will solve our society’s problems.  The tens of millions of males in distress remain hidden from us in part because there are males at the top of corporations and government–this creates the illusion that males are doing fine–and because we have decided to keep ourselves distracted from the millions of our invisible males in distress by defaults that cannot put a dent in male depression, dysphoria, or gun violence.

But throughout the society, things may be changing.  Everywhere I travel to speak, I meet boys, parents, teachers, counselors, and others who see the mismatch of boys with systems as their girls increasingly succeed in America and boys increasingly fail.  While in the past our social systems were not perfect (the therapy field, for instance, has never taught male/female brain difference to therapists), they did generally understand and intuit the need to nurture the nature of males into healthy, honorable, character driven manhood.  Today’s neglect of male nature leads to significant areas of nurture vacuum that accumulate.

At the level of nurture, male type depression/dysphoria comes from these 8 causes/factors.  I will list them for you here and also refer to books in which I have covered them more comprehensively.

1. Breakdown of the three family system that once raised boys (nuclear, extended, communal families working in tandem).  The Wonder of Boys, A Fine Young Man
   2. Mother attachment/impingement issues, maternal addiction or mental illness.  The Invisible Presence, Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy
   3. Breakdown in father-influence/paternal nurturance, including father alienation especially in adolescence (approximately 8 – 18 years old). The Prince and the King, Raising Boys By Design
   4. Other significant trauma that is untreated or unrecognized in early and middle years (e.g. developmental trauma, witnessing a murder, impact of poverty and inequity, divorce trauma, sexual abuse, significant bullying).  The Stone Boys, Saving Our Sons
   5. Education deficiency–schools mismatched with male development and neglectful of males beginning in preschool and continuing in educational failure throughout life, e.g. school to prison pipelines. Boys and Girls Learn Differently, The Minds of Boys
   6. Breakdown of male role/purpose development such that males do not develop along a purpose-driven, character-focused, and healthy manhood track. The Purpose of Boys, The Good Son
   7. Hyper-emphasis on screens/tech device use among males at young ages that impedes healthy dopamine system development in the male brain.  (Hyper-use of devices also harms the female brain, as do each of the elements noted here, though in female-specific ways).  Nurture the Nature, Saving Our Sons
   8. Hyper-intervention by adults in nurturing systems so that boys do not develop compassion, problem-solving, and resilience they need to be empathic and function resiliently later in life. Saving Our Sons

Not all boys who suffer these nurturing deficits or have endocrine disruption will harm others, but the odds of a boy becoming depressed because of one or more of these elements is real.  So are the odds that he will harm self or others–these odds go up with each nurturing and cellular deficit.   One primary reason mentioned earlier is that each element (and all in total) negate male frontal lobe development/activity/connectivity.  Impulse control and self-regulation housed in part in frontal lobe connectivity are needed to stop internal violence mechanisms during depression cycles.  When these connections don’t develop, boys (and then all of us) are more at risk of violence.

I know that media and experts tend to pick one (or two) elements for focus when faced with tragic violence or the boy crisis as a whole.  I have done this myself over the years, especially when working with reporters who need things to be short and quick.   This single factor analysis is often useful because it does at least point to one of the causes and issues.  But male-type depression and male violence need multi-factor analysis if we are to solve them.  This means our whole society must decide to study, nurture, and protect the whole boy.  We must do this not just for the boy, but so that our society gains collective protection.

With my clients I list the eight nurturing factors and the neurotoxins as a diagnostic tool that parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, policy makers, and anyone can use as “citizen scientists” to study the boys and men in their care.  If a boy you know has experienced all nine factors, he will likely become destructive in some way.   That likelihood may diminish as neurotoxins are removed then 8 becomes 7 then 6 then 5 and so on.  Studying each boy via a multiple-point analysis, then making changes in many of the areas, can provide a baseline for vigilance regarding male depression and, from there, male violence.

As you study these points, I can’t stress enough how important it is to think “male” and “boy” not just “person” and “child.” It is crucial all professionals in all fields are trained in male cellular testosterone (aggression chemical), female cellular oxytocin (bonding chemical), male/female brain difference, and points of nurture.  Without this emphasis, we will not fully understand why, when boys experience environmental neurotoxins and negative nurture factors, they are more likely than girls to physically harm others and kill themselves.

I help people understand nature and nurture elements by showing brain scans of males and females who come from multiple cultures and all races.  In our presentations, right there in living color, audiences can see the frontal lobe activity difference between boys and girls.  That one thing helps parents and professional understand why there is more violence from depressed males than depressed females.  Because Nature is already thinking “male” and “female” at a cellular and neural level, let’s all utilize nature, nurture, and science rather than tossing any one of these allies out of our discussions.

Culture

Meanwhile, the most killing by guns happens in America and our culture plays a part in everything.   Some culture elements we must grapple with have been hinted at already in this article.  The first one, however, is about guns themselves.

1. Gun adoration.  Our culture’s gun adoration triggers overuse and availability of guns among mentally ill males.  I have a gun, my family owns guns, I am not anti-gun; but guns do kill people more than knives or hammers do.  No amount of political argument will change that fact.  Our culture needs to grapple with our gun problem, and this will mean not just gun safety laws, but sending different cultural signals to all people, including depressed males, about the use of guns.
2. Male Mental Health.  More than 20% of us are mentally ill on any given day, but our culture does not have enough psychiatrists, counselors, mental health facilities, or funds to deal with this epidemic.  While researching Saving Our Sons, I asked a federal official why there were so many different governmental agencies and budgets to help women’s health and wellness but none or few for boys and men.  He said: “We spend a lot of money on males–the prison system.”  He was right, but our culture should find that reality, and the paucity of empathy for males inherent in it, abhorrent.
3. Technology.  Our culture stokes the male mental health crises via social media political bubbles and racist and other reactionary, hate groups.  I am not a tech expert, but I don’t think it takes a tech expert to call on legislators and technology companies to make changes to how we allow and how we monitor dangerous social media.   Each parent and school, too, must help boys cut back on their tech use.  The more real life they have–including the tasks, relationships, and bonds they establish in real life–the less depressed they will likely be.
4. Toxic Masculinity.  Our society stokes depressed males to take revenge on us by our academic/media obsession with “toxic masculinity” and other similar sociological concepts that often veneer real problems and real facts with political framing.  Masculinity does not create the boy who shoots up a school.  In fact, masculinity forbids that kind of egregious act against women,  children, and innocents.  Not less masculinity, but more is needed:  more fathering and male mentoring for our sons.  But we have convinced ourselves if it is masculine, it is bad.  This false culture frame is crushing healthy male development.  If there are certain things we don’t like about masculine development (e.g. telling boys they should never cry is indeed a wrong-headed concept), we can alter that part of masculine development without throwing out what boys need to become good men.
5. Male Roles.  Our culture has disavowed the healthy male role just like it has thrown out masculinity.  Thinking that equality for women required destroying men, we now struggle with destroyed men.  But male roles are manhood structures that align with purpose development.  Since our society is post-feminist now, we can and should teach the male role as equal to the female role, of course; we should teach variety in roles.  But we must push back on extremes in gender feminism.  Many of our boys will not become men–loving, wise, and successful male adults–if we refuse to raise them from day one with a social target in mind:  to have a necessary and sacred role in our world.

When the early school shooting began in the 1990s, I published The Wonder of Boys with a role development structure that can be used in our post-feminist world.   I hope you will use this role of husbandry (or your modification of it) to fill the role/identity void in our male youth.   The ten teaching principles of the husbandry role as listed here are spoken aloud to the boy:

1. 1. Seek lifestyles, communities, and helpmates that afford you a balance of personal spiritual development and life-sustaining work.
   2. Be devoted to, provide for, protect, and nurture those you are called to love.
   3. Actively participate in not just one but in three families.
   4. Live in concert with the natural world.
   5. Seek and create equal partnerships with women, female culture, and gender exceptions.
   6. Develop a male kinship system and test yourself and nurture yourself in it.
   7. Be an agent of service, social dialogue, and, when necessary, social change.
   8. Always try to know and refine the story of goodness and empathy you are living.
   9. Work hard but don’t forget to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
2. 10. Be open to new ideas and reasonable human adaptations.

Ultimately, nature, nurture, and culture will all need to work together to end the boy crisis.  I am an optimist:  I firmly believe we can heal our sons in the long term while dealing in the short term with keeping our depressed males away from the weapons that will allow them to kill us and our children.  I also know that if we do not do these things, we will live and die–and our children will die–in an increasingly deadly world.

–Michael Gurian