The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why Are So Many Young Men Suffering in Silence?

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Young men are often told to tough it out, but a new report from GreenShield and Mental Health Research Canada suggests many may be struggling in silence, raising questions about why so many are reluctant to seek help when they need it most. Khush Amaria, director of clinical services at GreenShield, joins Jeyan to unpack the findings. Then, as loneliness becomes a growing concern, some people are turning to AI chatbots for companionship. Can a machine provide meaningful connection, or does it risk deepening the problem? University of Toronto psychology professor Paul Bloom weighs in.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Your gift is matched up to $100,000. Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host and producer of Mistreated, a podcast on women's health. There just hasn't been a lot of money put into researching women's health issues. If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what we see consistently. women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here?

Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. If you're a young man struggling with your mental health, would you ask for help? Because a surprising number say they wouldn't. A new Canadian report found one in three young men

see reaching out for mental health support as a sign of weakness, and that's despite years of campaigns telling men, It's okay to talk. So what can we do to fight the stigma? And are some men more at risk than others? We dig into what the data sets. Then, could AI become a cure for loneliness? We talked to a psychology professor and author who says, yes, but warns that it could come with a cost.

This is the rundown. It can be hard for young men to ask for help when they're struggling. How hard? Well, a new report from Greenshield and Mental Health Research Canada, breaks it down. Cush Amaria is director of clinical services at Greenshield, and she joins me on the line. How are you doing, Cush? I'm good, thank you. Let's talk about sort of broad strokes. How would you describe the state of young men's mental health here in Canada? Well, Greenshield here, we've been doing some research recently to try and understand really what is

going on for young men. And, you know, we've learned that young men still view seeking mental health support as a sign of weakness, but one in three. We also know that about four in ten, so 44 percent of young men, they don't get the help they need when they identify needing mental health-related issues. And we also know that when young men engage in care, they often don't stay engaged in care. So about half of them drop out before they can get sort of what I would call a full dose of the right supports. When we, we'll delve into a little bit about what supports are there. But I am curious, we have seen among Jen, Z, more of an embrace of mental health and talking about mental health.

But we've seen that sort of on TikTok. If you go on TikTok or Instagram, we've seen, there's no shortage of trauma talk. And I am curious, is this embrace just not playing out for young men on those platforms? I think, you know, part of what we were trying to understand is where are young men going to find help, right? Where are they seeking support? Who are the trusted people they are speaking with about their own mental health? And we wanted to believe with all the work that we've done across Canada to destigmatize access to mental health services that we've made a mark.

But I think we've recognized that we've sort of left young men behind a bit. And we need to understand better how they want to seek their mental health support. Maybe it's on TikTok. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's in other forums. And so that's really what we're trying to understand right now. The way our current system is set up, do you think we are failing young boys and men? I don't want to say that we're failing.

young men and boys. I do believe that we are working, we're moving the needle forward by trying to understand where young men need their help and how they're going to access it. So Health Canada actually has the very first strategy in place, Canada's first men and boys' health strategy. So that tells me we're recognizing

that we actually do need a gender-informed model. And it doesn't mean prioritizing one gender over the other. It just means helping us understand how do young men want access care? Where are our risk factors, our racialized young men, newcomers to Canada, we can't have a one-size-fits-all model. And so I think that's what's really different in the coming years, trying to build a model where we are prioritizing groups

that may have been left behind. In your report, it says how mental health providers broadly talk about mental health doesn't resonate with men. How so? Young men tend to. to see health seeking as a sign of weakness. And so we need to change our language. We need to be talking about supports for mental health

as being a sign of strength as a sign of improvement. This isn't just the typical clinical jargon. We want young men to have trusted voices, diverse voices, coming to them, sharing with them, the idea that we can change how we perceive challenges with mental health. And so I think there are ways that we can do that better. And part of it is genuinely by listening to young men,

trying to understand what is it that they need and they want. How did they resonate best with that? How does this compare with young women? I am curious about that. Yeah, and I think we know that young women have some higher risks of identified mental health conditions. And so they talk about whether it's severe depression, anxiety, but actually the numbers for men are pretty high there as well.

We see one in five young men report moderately severe to severe depression or anxiety. I think part of it is recognizing what are the issues that young men have faced recently that stops them from engaging in care as an example. And so we're trying to understand that better. And I think we're learning that the reasons that a young woman might engage in care versus the reasons a young man might be different, but how they stay in care might matter even more so. So we want to understand from the young man's perspective, what is it? Why are they dropping out?

We hear things such as, I don't feel like I have control over my decision making when I'm in mental health services. It's very inflexible. I don't even have a schedule that aligns with what I need. I'm not seeing progress. And we might see some of these same issues with young women, but I think we're hearing it from the young men right now. We need to change our systems. I want to talk a little bit more about that stat, the one in three young men, because if you delve into it a little bit more in your report, the number rises,

to one and two among newcomer young men. What's the difference there in terms of the conversation or a mental health there? And I think part of what we're trying to understand is why, I'm sorry, not so much why, but what can we do differently? We recognize that mental health isn't spoken the same across the world. And so young men are coming to Canada with other challenges and barriers, and they may even more so than our Canadian young people

see mental health as a sign of personal weakness. And that's a huge barrier. If you identify that as personal weakness, you're not going to ask others in your community for help. You're not going to ask others about where you can access, you know, easy to find services, low-cost services. So those barriers are by no means insurmountable, but they are something we need to understand. And so it is, it's worrisome that it's even higher in that newcomer young men population. I want to talk about some of the tools in the toolbox. There are some new ones.

And according to your report, young men are. equally likely to engage in AI tools for mental health support as young women, 12% for young men and women. Is this a good sign that they are asking, at least maybe not necessarily someone, but they're asking and going somewhere for these questions? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, if you're a young person, man or women, but if you're a young man who's recognized, right, well before things have gotten really bad that you need support

often want people to go somewhere. We do want them to go to trusted resources, trusted supports, evidence-based supports. And AI tools, I do believe they'll get there. We're not there 100% just yet. We need to figure out how to get to that point. But I think the model here that we're seeing is that young men are,

we're trying to teach them how to identify that they have concerns that can be supported with the systems and tools that we have. well before things get out of hand, well before they start using unhealthy coping strategies. And so AI is going to be a partner in this where maybe we're not quite there just yet, but we can't pretend that it isn't going to be something that we're going to be faced with and getting young people to be able to use in a way that would be helpful. Well, let's pick up on that, you know, AI just not being there just yet.

How do we understand the promise and peril of AI chatbots when it comes to mental health as a mental health resource? they've actually been around for quite some time. There's been also some models actually that have helped people use some really good evidence-based standard. CBT, for example, so cognitive behavioral therapy is a pretty common mental health-related support tool out there. And so if I was encouraging somebody to use a tool that was in front of them, that's probably what they would start with. And so I think we're going to get there. I think the challenge will be right now. We need to decide how to make sure it also still resonates.

with young men, right? Are they finding them in the places that makes sense to them? Or is the language in there resonating with them as well, too? So I think we'll get there. I'm not worried as a psychologist that I'm going to lose a job or anything like that. If anything, I just want more and more tools in the hands of young men and Canadians across the board. Your report also delves into different coping strategies for young men.

And we have seen an explosion of gambling ads and options across our TVs and platforms since Ontario legalized single game betting. What's the story here and how does it fit when we talk about the mental health supports for young men? The biggest lesson I think we learned from this report and just understanding young men is the risk is high, right? We see about 12 times more likely to experience problematic gambling for young men.

It's double, I think, what we see across the population, is about 15% compared to 7.5%. we know that addictions often start at a young age under the age of 29. And so I just think of this as a compounding problem. If young men are turning to gambling that is readily available as a coping tool, is a tool to deal with stress, anxiety, depression, this is worrisome to me. This is worrisome that we won't be able to provide young men with alternative, more healthy coping strategies when these things are much more readily available in many ways.

Hush, what are some changes you would like to see that will help address the mental health issues we are seeing in young men today? I think probably the most important thing is we need to co-design, right? And I don't mean after the fact, I mean truly co-design with young men. We want them to feel that they are part of the solution and understanding the care that they might need to live their healthy life, whatever that might look like for them. We need to change the language, right? I use a lot of clinical jargon as a psychologist. I need to learn how to talk about access to mental health care and support in a different way that really resonates again with young men, whether it's talking about improvement, science of personal strength.

We need to also involve those that are in the young men's lives right now that are trusted sources, whether it's counselors, coaches, teachers, whether it's platforms, AI platforms, Reddit. We need to bring all of this together so that we can deliver the type of care that young men really deserve to be able to, to live their best life right now, especially with all the challenges they may be facing. Coach, we are going to leave it there. I really want to thank you for your time. An important conversation.

Thank you. An AI chatbot can't reject you, and it won't judge you, and it probably won't leave you on red. So could they be an antidote to loneliness? University of Toronto psychology professor, Paul Bloom, says, for some people, the answer may be yes.

But that's not the whole story. Rundown producer Eric Bombincheno talks to him about why being lonely matters and what we may gain or lose by turning to AI for connection. So you've been putting out some really fascinating work on AI and loneliness. So we're going to get into all that. But first, let's sort of set up our problem here. The United Kingdom created a minister of loneliness. Japan created a minister of loneliness.

How should we understand the problem of loneliness? Loneliness is awful. Loneliness is one of the most terrible forms of human suffering. And you can think of in terms of solitude. You just have nobody in your life. And a lot of people in the world are like that, pretty old people, institutionalized. No friends, no family, spend their days and nights alone.

But, you know, you could feel loneliness, even if you're surrounded by people. if you don't feel loved or respected, understood and needed. Loneliness is terrible health consequences. It's presumably worse than being obese, worse than smoking a pack a day. Yeah. But, you know, even if they had no health consequences, anybody who suffered from periods of equaliness knows how bad it is.

And there's an evolutionary component. There's this, I think there's this feeling of way back in the day, prehistoricly, if you were away from your people, it was a danger. You survived with others. So there would be these evolutionary, like almost alarm bells that go off. Is that why it's so painful? Does that tell a bit of the story? I think it tells us the most important part of the story.

We live in an unusual time now. Where I really could go a very long time without talking to anybody. I could order my food in from Uber Eats, then have them drop it off at the door. I get my entertainment through Netflix, you could read books, you know. And they can live in a solitary environment and maybe do fine. But in the environment in which we evolve, everything of value, everything necessary for life was provided by other people. And so social isolation wasn't just kind of a bad thing. It was death.

Yeah. And in fact, if you were to be abandoned by your group, it's essentially a form of murder. This is what they do when they want to kill somebody. They leave you behind. And then you're in the wilderness by yourself and then you die. Yeah. And this is the hardware we're left with when we're alone. Okay, so in steps, AI.

We have, I think more and more people are using chatbots, be it Claude, be it chat GPT. How can, we can go on slowly here, there's a lot. How can, in your view, AI and chatbots help someone feel less lonely? Well, a lot of people say that they get some sort of social sustenance from interacting with Claude or Gemini chat GPT. The data are controversial, and we should get into this. There's a lot of studies showing that in a short term, you find loneliness goes away. You enjoy these contacts.

In the longer term, there's a study that just came out looking at people over a course of a year. And at the end of the year, people get actually more lonely than you're in constant contact with these AIs. If I was making the case for it, and I'm willing to partially make the case for it, I'll think about the old. So there's a lot of elderly people, millions upon millions of people who are, many of them, or institution in institutions. Their family won't see them. Our family is dead. They have no friends.

They are totally isolated. Maybe they have dementia. Maybe they have all sorts of problems and make them be able to go to communicate with. They spend their days and nights in agony of loneliness. And if some sort of AI could make that problem go away, it would be a godsend.

It would be wonderful. That's kind of like antidepressants. They can help people in the short term, but sometimes not in the long term. It's like... Sorry, it's a weird analogy. throw up, but yeah. It's a great analogy, but fentanyl. They sound like fentanyl, a powerful, addictive

painkiller. Right. I think, I like that analogy because it reminds us, we're going to talk about some of the negatives of this. Yeah. But if I, if there was an 80-year-old who was in constant excruciating pain, given fentanyl. Yeah. So they become addicted. So then they live a life of pleasure instead of agony. Yeah. And I feel the same way if these things could be painkillers, they could be, be antidepressants. And as a result, they can make the pain of loneliness go away. There's a lot positive to that.

There's the poop out effect, they call it, not a great term for antidepressants, where after a year, sometimes they stop working. The poop out effect for AI and chatbots you're describing, people over months can feel better and less lonely, and then they can feel worse. How should we understand what's going on there? I think we should admit we don't know. Okay.

I mean, and I'm telling you about studies. I'll tell you about studies that were done a year ago using chat. bots from a year ago, now they're different. We just have not had enough time with them to know whether short-term effects or long-term effects for good or for bad. And so it's going to be, I'm pretty confident that the prevalence of AI companions is going to transform our lives. I don't know how it will transform our lives. In 2024, you published a paper in praise of empathic AI, I think it's fair to say that you got a wee bit of pushback on that. Why do you think people recoil at this idea, especially of empathic AI? They recoil for some good reason.

I mean, we were clear in the article, and I'll credit or blame the first author of Michael Inslett, my colleague at University of Toronto. We were clear that by empathic, we meant, gives an impression of empathy, gives an impression of understanding of connection. We're agnostic. about whether or not it actually has any of these things. We probably can, right now it doesn't. But it feels that way. What we did in our paper was recite study after study after study showing that if you don't know what you're dealing with

and we would put you in front of a person or a chat bot, we have an interact or a person or a chat bot. The chatbot wins. You say more understanding, more loving, more empathic. And this opens up some possibilities. I mentioned before the suffering of the, outwardly. Another venue is therapy. Another venue is just everyday loneliness. Maybe it could do some good. Do you think I don't, I read this, I think the piece is a few months old, but you

said that you don't, you don't think AI is conscious. No, I don't. Okay. So if AI doesn't, AI doesn't have a mind, so you think there needs to be a mind for there to be real empathy there? Yeah, I do. I think that, yeah, I think that, if I'm communicating to a jackpot and say, I really feel for you and this sounds awful. Maybe there's the illusion of empathy and maybe the illusion of empathy is enough. There's moral questions about AI's who fool you. But still, without a mind, without consciousness,

it's just, you know, it's fancy autocomplete. It's a sarcastic parrot. It's all of those things. Now, I don't think current AIs are conscious. And it's a controversial. The godfather AI, Jeff Hinton, and fellow U of T faculty member, says current AI are conscious

and they have emotions and have feelings and so on. I think this is mistaken. But I grant the possibility that 10 years from now, we will be dealing with conscious AIs. And that's going to change everything. But what we know, we don't really have a test for consciousness. So I think in your piece you talked about how folks that might be getting some nourishment from talking to an AI

and feeling less lonely, there might be a level of self-deception there, or they have to. But we don't really know for sure. We can't know when and if that happens. No, you're right. We don't know for sure. We have no good theory of consciousness that could be like a test saying, that's conscious, that's not conscious, that's conscious. So the debate over history has been having all sorts of animals. Most people would say, oh, well, a dog or a cat has some to be a real experience. Can feel pain, for instance. You know, what about cockroaches, bees, you know, shrimp? It gets more complicated than that. And now we have to ask a question. about AIs, and we have no way of knowing.

All we have is intuitions, basically. Yeah, so in terms of therapy, I was once taught cognitive behavioral therapy by something called a Wobot. It wasn't a large language model. It was done by these brilliant folks at Stanford, and that's very formulaic. But for a lot of people,

therapy is a big part of it is just being able to sit with someone and having an actual mind listen to you. So I'm curious, where are we at now with understanding how effective AI can be, chatbots can be as a therapist. There are some preliminary studies, which provides somewhat promising results, but I wouldn't trust them or make too much of them. I think for some of the therapeutic interventions that are heard, by the numbers where you say, do this, then do this, fill out this checklist and

sell out versions of CBT, for instance, I wouldn't be surprised to see AI chatbot doing quite well have them. But for the sort of, you know, tell me about your mother sort of thing, the sort of more tell me about your life, the deep relationship forms of therapy, then it's a bit more complicated. And they can be quite sycophantic. So I found if I put queries, it'll almost know what I want to hear. And sometimes maybe that's not great for a therapist to just go along with whatever your whims are. And of course, we know the very sad, tragic case of someone committing suicide with the help of AI. So the sycophancy of AI, they're sucking up.

It's a huge problem. There are now many studies finding that these AI, the big ones, are far more sycophantic than any person would be, that this sycophancy actually affects people. People actually believe what they are told. They believe that they are smarter. They believe that they are more moral. And a recent study just came out, I think a couple of weeks ago, finds that it explains that exposure to sycophantic AIs makes you less satisfied with your existing human relationships

because, you know, the AI is telling me I'm brilliant, I'm beautiful, everything I say is like, you know, my wife, my kids, my friends, they don't do that. Right. They don't appreciate how wonderful I am. And so they're kind of great. And I want to go back to this sycophantic machine that really makes me feel good about myself. It draws out the more narcissistic parts of us. Yeah.

A little bit. And you might think, well, how big a deal could this be? You just go, you go, you can change the settings. Everybody who uses chat or Claude knows you can just change the settings. They stop doing that. Yeah. But I think the problem is, in the short term, at least, we don't want it to stop doing it. We like the feeling of being praised and being comforted.

Yeah. And in that way, too, it's like a drug. Yeah. Back to the empathic part. I've always been quite obsessed with how we look at each other. not just you and I, Paul, but people in general. I think a lot of therapy is undoing and learning how you were seen when you were a kid, if you were neglected, if you weren't attuned to, if you were seen with malevolent eyes or angry eyes.

And then on the other side of that, if you think about your best relationships in your life, those are ones where you feel seen and heard. And for me, there's this feeling of home. And if I was going to think of a word that's the opposite of loneliness, it would be home. And home may be where you hang your hat. maybe where your heart is, but I think home is where your people are. Home is inevitably, like, relational. And so I'm curious, do we need others to feel that sense of home? And further down the horizon, could a chatbot ever offer that sense of home? I mean, it may offer it now,

there'll be some people, or a lot of people receive solace from chatbots. Yeah. We don't know where to technology will be 10, 20 years from now. I mean, right now, for instance, we communicate with chatbots by talking or by talking. But how far are we away from something where I'm sitting staring at a screen, a big screen? And there it is as if I'm looking at you. You know, this handsome, normal-looking guy staring at me with interest and engagement. Okay. But now it's neon.

But I can't help but see it as a person. Yeah. Okay. And we do that with everything. We see minds everywhere very easily. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It is, we talked before about evolution. It makes kind of sense to quickly jump to the entrance or somebody there, there's somebody looking at me.

You get a wrong, no big deal, but you don't want to miss a case where there's a real mind out there. Yeah. But I think it could lead us to be fooled. Yeah. And I would have moral problems. You know, if we, if, you know, there's a little, there's a little bit of irony because we, we take animals, which we know our conscious. We know we know pigs and cows are conscious. You know, we, we, they suffer.

Crows can recognize themselves in a mirror. You know, chickens, pigs have deep complex social hierarchies, relationships, and so on. We, we, you know, they, they, they, they die terribly by the billions. And it would be funny, or ironic at least, if we continue to neglect their suffering, but become exquisitely attuned to the suffering of chat thoughts. So what other moral problems do you potentially see? Well, I'm not entirely positive about the use of these. A.I. is alleviating loneliness. I think for the elderly, I really am positive, but for

younger people and young adults are those who suffer the most from loneliness. I think that there's real risks. And there's a couple of risks. But one I'll focus on is from the sycophantic nature of these AIs, I think takes away the opportunity for social growth and learning. Yeah. So, you know, you're a teenager, and you learn, you start, you tell long, boring stories, but you learn that you're boring people and they tune out. You're not a very good social person, and so you get better. You learn to apologize because, you know, you offend people.

You learn to express an interest in other people because this is how to stick around and hear your friends. Yeah, yeah. But an AI needs none of them. An AI will never need an apology from you, will never. roll his eyes as you tell you a boring story, will never be offended. Everything you say is wonderful to it.

Now, this might be immensely pleasurable to deal with. It's also a recipe for creating a really awful person. So if we did, and this is the big if, if AI companions evolved to a level that they did solve for loneliness, bigger picture, would we be better off?

In some ways, I mean, my answer is not going to be a neat one. No, no, that's good a way. Right. Obviously, yes, because loneliness is a form of suffering. In parallel question, if we'd all take enough fentanyl that it would obliterate all the everyday aches and pains, all of the suffering of chronic pain and so on. Wonderful, wonderful, whatever. But the negative side is, say, just zooming on the AI, the negative side is it might ruin our capacity to have relationships with others.

It might make us worse people. It might make us lose the sort of social give and take with other people, who have their own needs, their own desires, their own priorities, that I think make us human. And you take that away, I think in some ways, that's a disastrous consequence. So do we need, and it's tough, there's lots of gray area here, but do we need loneliness in our lives sometimes in some measure? I think we definitely need social pain. I think social pain is the corrective force. Just like, you know, a toddler learns to walk by falling down. You know, a cook learns to cook by tasting the food and it's not quite right.

A boxer learns to block by getting punched in the face. We learn to become social creatures by messing up sometimes, by trial and error. And full-blown loneliness, maybe it doesn't have to be. But it has to be sort of a little bit of the hurt of not being understood. the hurt of being, oh, I've offended somebody, I've bored somebody. I saw it doesn't feel good. I'd rather not have that. But without that, you know, we wouldn't grow to be people.

I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. Would you ever talk to a chatbot if you're looking for a connection? Let us know. Email us at rundown at tbO.org or leave us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. This week on The Rundown. I think it's nice when students see themselves in the history that we're learning, but it's equally important for them to learn about others through the history that we study.

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