Capturing Men’s Voices to Inform Mental Health Services

Look 👀

Goal: Encourage men in Dorset to seek mental health support earlier.
Policy Goal: Reduce deaths by suicide in men.

The challenge was to capture the voices of men aged 30–50 in Dorset. Their perspectives would inform segmentation, persona development, and messaging for Light On, an early intervention awareness campaign.

Listen 🎧

We ran a Behavioural Insight Deep Dive using our Look, Listen, Learn © process.
Methods included:

• COM-B analysis

• Persona development

• Messaging strategy design

Men spoke candidly about the barriers they face: lack of skills, low confidence, and long-standing beliefs that made conversations about mental health difficult. Yet there was also a strong desire to move beyond “asking for help” towards building confidence in listening, checking in, and normalising everyday conversations about well-being.

Learn 💡

The insights reshaped NHS, MIND Dorset, and Public Health campaigns, ensuring they reflected what local men said mattered most.

Key learning points:

• Campaigns need to show mental well-being as a positive aspiration for all men, not just a crisis response.

• A 3-step behaviour change model was recommended to build skills, confidence, and positive dialogue.

• Local men became the leaders of the Light On campaign, making it authentic and community-driven.

The work went beyond surface-level messaging and reframed male mental health as equally important as physical health.

Final Thought

When men’s voices are heard, the message changes — from crisis to confidence, and from silence to shared well-being.

Do you want me to now do the same SEO Look–Listen–Learn format for your other case studies (like smoking or sexual health), so they all build into one consistent content hub on Kajabi?