Research article

"It's sort of like being a detective": Understanding how Australian men self-monitor their health prior to seeking help

James A Smith^1,2 , Annette Braunack-Mayer¹ , Gary Wittert² and Megan Warin³

¹  Discipline of Public Health, School of Population Health & Clinical Practice, University of Adelaide, Level 9 – Tower Building (MDP 207), 10 Pulteney St, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia

²  Discipline of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Level 6 – Eleanor Harrald Building, Frome Road, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia

³  Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, 43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK

author email corresponding author email

BMC Health Services Research 2008, 8:56doi:10.1186/1472-6963-8-56

Published:	14 March 2008

Abstract

Background

It is commonly held that men delay help seeking because they are ignorant about and disinterested in their health. However, this discussion has not been informed by men's lay perspectives, which have remained almost entirely absent from scholarship relating to men's help seeking practices.

Methods

In this qualitative paper, we draw on semi-structured interviews with 36 South Australian men to examine their understandings of help seeking and health service use.

Results & Discussion

We use participants' talk about self-monitoring to challenge the assumption that men are disinterested in their health, arguing instead that the men in our study monitored their health status and made conscious decisions about when and how to seek help. Using an inductive approach during the thematic analysis we were able to identify four key factors that influenced how men monitored their health and explain how these intersect with the way men sought help and used health services.

Conclusion

We show that the men in our study were actively engaged in the self-monitoring of their health. We suggest that these findings offer an alternative approach for understanding how we can promote men's interaction with health services.