An Exploration About the Health and Wellbeing of Male Teenagers in Ireland - A Practitioner`s Perspective

Aim:
The study aimed to gain insight into male teenagers, aged 13-19, health and wellbeing needs from
perspectives such as school counselling, youth work and sports coaching.
Method:
This qualitative study adopted an inductive phenomenological approach. Data collection of 219 min of
primary data took place in form of four semi-structured interviews. Interviews were recorded on a voice
recorder, typed verbatim and subject to further Thematic Analysis (TA) according to Braun and Clarke`s
approach (2006.)
Results:
Ireland was the first country with a National Men`s Health Policy (DoHC, 2009) and Irish researchers
advised the current WHO European Men`s Health strategy. Recent general challenges for adolescents`
health, such as “social media, gaming, screen time and online pornography are recognised as well as a
change in notions of masculinity.” (WHO, 2018, p. 40). Statistical evidence shows existing inequalities of
male adolescent compared to female adolescent health.
Healthy Ireland (DoH 2013) and i.e. the Department of Children and Youth Affairs strategy “Better
outcomes, brighter futures…” encourage cross sectoral and interagency work to achieve health for
everybody. Lots of developments have taken place in recent years in research (i.e. Growing up in Ireland
study), but few of them are gender specific. The strategies set the right targets, but gender health inequalities
for males still remain and their voices have not been sufficiently heard.
Conclusion:
A whole-of-society approach is best suited to extinguish existing gender inequalities, ideally accompanied
by research to ensure young male voices are heard and subsequently inform evidence based and targeted
approaches.