Tool Box
Issue No. 9 - February/March 2003
Men's Health - Important for Business
Our understanding and experience of health, utilisation of health services, and health outcomes are affected by gender. Health outcomes for men are poorer than for women. While there are no major differences between men and women in the levels of self-reported sickness, the utilisation of health services (especially early intervention, mental health and prevention services) by men is lower than by women.
Men also tend to delay seeking health assistance. Doctors are less likely to identify significant mental health problems in men. At all ages men are more likely to die than women. Male life expectancy is lower than female; men experience higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, accidents and injuries and suicide. Contributing factors include risk-taking behaviour, smoking, substance abuse, inadequate physical activity, diet (and consequently much higher rates of obesity) and mental illness.
These sad facts cannot be separated from the socioeconomic context in which men live and work. Occupation, level of income, unemployment and personal relationships interact with ethnicity, sexual and cultural identity, and age to influence and determine health status and health behaviours. Many of the environments where men live and work do not support either healthy lifestyles or healthy behaviours.
There has been even less attention paid to the reproductive health of men. Table 1 shows the prevalence of sexual disorders in men in the USA in a survey taken in 1992. There is no comparable data for Australian men. Prostate cancer is as common as breast cancer and testicular cancer is a significant problem in men under 40.
In men, ageing is associated with more frequent and increasingly severe symptoms such as diminished sexual desire and erectile capacity, decrease in cognitive ability, mood changes, fatigue, alterations in body composition (decrease in muscle and increase in fat mass), and decrease in bone mineral density. There is also an...
