COVID-19 pandemic decrease men’s mental health: background and consequence analysis

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze, from the perspective of self-report of antecedents and consequences, how the COVID-19 pandemic decrease the health of men living in Brazil. Methods: Qualitative study, conducted with 200 men living in all regions of Brazil through the application of a semi-structured instrument, hosted on an online platform. The data were analyzed with the Collective Subject Discourse method and anchored in the theoretical framework of Dialectical Historical Materialism. Results: The COVID-19 pandemic decrease men’s mental health because it worsened the history of personal, affective, family, occupational, dysfunctional and/or morbid problems, causing consequences of psychic somatization, family dissolution, end of affective relationship, marital conflicts, social isolation, financial difficulty, vulnerability of the work situation and occupational exhaustion, sudden changes in behavior, barriers in access to health care and impaired experiences of death and grief. Conclusions: Social support networks need to be strengthened in order to minimize the direct and indirect impacts caused by the pandemic materiality for mental health and the various dimensions of life affected.