Boys Do Cry
Four-minute music video made by University of Melbourne researchers to encourage Australian men to seek help for mental health problems, tested in a preregistered randomized trial.
- Years
- 2021–now
- Country
- Australia
- Topic
- Mental healthSuicide prevention
- Asks people to
- Seek help
- Strategy
- Coping narrative
- Channel
- Social (organic)
- Audience
- Men
Evidence
PreregisteredNo effect
Online RCT with 476 men (Nicholas 2025; ANZCTR registered July 2021): help-seeking intention scores rose after both the Boys Do Cry video and the control video, with no difference between arms (difference 0.62, 95% CI -1.11 to 2.35). No adverse events.
Sponsor (who paid)
- University of Melbourne Academic, developer and evaluator
- Movember NGO, research partner
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
- Man Up 2016
- HeadsUpGuys 2015–now
Sources
- Nicholas A et al. Boys Do Cry: a randomised controlled trial testing the effects of a music video promoting help-seeking for mental health difficulties in Australian men. BMC Public Health 2025;25(1):141 evaluation · 2025 · DOI 10.1186/s12889-024-21172-7 · PMID 39806300
- Nicholas A et al. Boys Do Cry: what do Australian men think of a music video encouraging them to talk about their mental health struggles?. BMC Public Health 2025;25(1):3246 evaluation · 2025 · DOI 10.1186/s12889-025-24214-w · PMID 41034908
- Scotti Requena S et al. An Evaluation of the Boys Do Cry Suicide Prevention Media Campaign on Twitter: Mixed Methods Approach. JMIR Form Res 2023 evaluation · 2023 · DOI 10.2196/49325 · PMID 37676723
Research notes
Created 2026-10-22 by literature mining (PubMed/OpenAlex); evidence level, outcome and findings are paraphrased from the evaluation abstracts, full texts not read. No credits: no page naming an agency was checked. startYear 2021 is the trial registration year. Movember partnership inferred from an author affiliation. Scotti Requena 2023 added 2026-10-22 (openalex-deep queue; DOI checked on Crossref and PMID via NCBI esummary 2026-10-22): Twitter reach only (140,650 impressions, 4,477 engagements). Evidence unchanged.
Record cases/au-boys-do-cry.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign