Grant: Operating Grant: Boy's and Men's Health

Young men can experience the loss of a friend due to the risky behaviours men may engage in as a means of proving their masculinity. However, there is almost no research on the ways young men respond to grief and loss, the influence it has on their ideals of masculinity, or on their own risk behaviours. The traumatic grief that the unexpected loss of a friend can evoke may cause young men to question their values and risk practices, and may offer a point in time to provide interventions aimed at supporting young men to develop health-enhancing masculine roles, identities and relations. Alternately, it might bring an even greater commitment to risk-taking, out of loyalty to the friend who died. This qualitative study will extend our understandings of how young men respond to grief and loss, and how the emotional response following the risk-related death of a peer might be mobilized as an opportunity to assist other young men in reframing their masculinity in health enhancing ways.