[user104658]

There's definitely a strong distinction between "poor mental health" and actual clinical/neurological conditions. Poor mental health is what I would call things like depression and anxiety, though I don't think the distinction is "seriousness", depression and anxiety can be extremely serious and debilitating all the way up to and including suicide. Likewise, neurological mental health problems can obviously range from extreme (permanent inpatient territory) right down to very manageable (usually with medication).

Also to complicate things further there's plenty of crossover; pathological mental health problems can create large amounts of depression and anxiety for obvious reasons, and behavioural depression and anxiety can in extreme cases lead to actual psychosis etc.

Really there's a never-ending push and pull in mental health services between psychiatrists (generally medical approach) and psychologists (generally behavioural approach) and the debate about which is best (or which combination of the two) is constant.

From what I know there's actually not a huge difference between the incidence of general psychosis between men and women. Schizophrenia specifically though is something like 70% male. I wonder though if some of the difference is down to different manifestation and the diagnostic criteria. You're right that really across all medicine there's what's termed the "white male default" ... which basically means that a lot of diagnostic criteria is based on "what that thing looks like in the average white bloke". My daughter for example is Autistic but we were very lucky to have a good paediatrician with a holistic approach, because she doesn't fit the "diagnostic criteria" in MANY ways, and that's true for a lot of her female classmates in special education. The "outline of what autism with learning disability looks like" is based on a) boys and yes b) white boys. Sadly that also means a lot of the "standard" education in LD services is geared towards that and significant adjustment is needed to fit anyone else. I think that probably applies all across clinical mental health so it's worth considering if it's really "more men are afflicted with X" and not simply "more men are diagnosed with X".