Men Don't Cry – They Quietly Fall Apart

01 /The Concept

Mental calls itself a "personal trainer for the mind" – but its most defining characteristic is that it's built exclusively for men.

The app aims to help men build mental resilience, manage stress, develop discipline, and find direction. Though arguably those last three things flow naturally once you've sorted the direction.

The product bundles training for mind, mood, and body in a single package.

On the psychological side, there's a catalog of AI therapists, each with a distinct personality, philosophy, and worldview – letting users choose who to talk to based on their preferences or the situation at hand. The appeal, as the startup frames it, is that these AI therapists "don't judge you or your choices – they help you shift the angle from which you see yourself."

For the intellectual track, the app contains summaries of more than 1,000 self-improvement books, distilled into over 5,000 actionable insights spanning everything from building confidence to improving social skills. Crucially, the app doesn't ask you to read the books – just the summaries.

Every day, a two-minute podcast drops with a practical tactic a man can apply in daily life. The goal is to make it a morning habit – a mental warm-up, not a commitment. Two minutes is the point.

The body isn't neglected. A push-up program designed by a heavyweight boxing champion walks users from five reps to one hundred. The deliberate simplicity is intentional – one exercise, many muscle groups, no excuse not to start.

For the mind-meets-body angle, there's also a cold shower protocol developed by a Navy SEALs instructor – which is, frankly, as much mental toughness training as physical conditioning.

The first week is free. After that, the subscription runs $59.99 per year.

Mental launched in 2022 and raised two small seed rounds that year. The startup has now closed a $10.1 million round.

02 /Why It Matters

Mental closely mirrors the UK app Mettle ([related review](/review/pomogi-muzhchinam)), which raised £2.5 million back in 2023. Mettle positioned itself as "mental fitness" – helping men take control of their lives and achieve more.

"Mental fitness" versus "personal trainer for the mind" – both metaphors are doing the same deliberate work: mapping psychological wellbeing onto the framework of physical training. That framing is not accidental.

- Men historically resist therapy and mental health apps, because those are "for people who can't handle things"

- But training? That's not just acceptable for men – it's admirable.

So both Mettle and Mental are repositioning mental health from the "weakness" category into the "performance" category. The body gets trained here too – which reinforces the reframe without requiring users to fully acknowledge what they're actually working on.

This matters because the underlying problem is serious. 77% of men show measurable signs of poor mental health – anxiety, stress, depression. Yet 40% have never discussed their mental health with anyone. The reasons they give: "I was taught to handle my own problems," "I don't want to be a burden," "it's embarrassing," "something feels wrong about it," "I don't want to seem weak."

The consequences are severe. Men account for nearly four times as many suicides as women in the US. Among middle-aged men specifically, the rate is even higher.

This is a real and significant public health gap. The conventional approaches don't reach the people who need them most. So the answer has to be a different delivery mechanism – which is what Mettle and Mental are attempting.

03 /Opportunities

The men's mental health problem isn't new. But it's being intensified by an unexpected accelerant: AI adoption. As AI raises uncertainty about job displacement and skills obsolescence, the anxiety it generates hits men especially hard – because the social expectation that men be providers creates a specific kind of pressure when that role feels threatened.

The first direction is building specialized apps for men's mental health – applying the same insight Mettle and Mental have: you have to disguise the packaging.

But the bigger opportunity is more universal. Even in the US – a country with relatively high per capita therapy usage – only about 3.6% of adults see a mental health professional at least once a year. Broaden that to any form of mental wellness engagement including apps, and it reaches about 23%. Which still means 77–80% of American adults aren't engaging with any form of mental health support.

Is that because they don't need it? Unlikely. The more probable explanation is that the existing formats don't appeal to them.

Generational data suggests the underlying demand is shifting. About 35–37% of Gen Z and Millennials have sought mental health support at some point, compared to roughly 22% of Baby Boomers. The market is expanding – it just needs better products to capture it.

The principle Mettle and Mental are proving out – change the packaging, change the uptake – applies far beyond men's wellness. The broader opportunity is finding new wrappers for psychological support that don't look like psychological support. What does that look like for different audiences, different life stages, different contexts? When you combine it with something people already do or already want – what could that be?