# Incels and Psychotherapy: Experiences, Attitudes, and Resistance to Mental-Health Interventions

Louis Bachaud, Andrew Thomas, Macken Murphy

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# Incels and Psychotherapy: Experiences, Attitudes, and Resistance to Mental-Health Interventions

**Author Information:** Louis Bachaud<sup>FR</sup>: Université de Lille, Laboratoire CECILLE.

louis.bachaud@univ-lille.fr. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1542-7336.

Andrew G. Thomas<sup>UK</sup>: Swansea University, School of Psychology. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5251-7923.

Macken Murphy<sup>AU</sup>: The University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7501-4693.

**Competing Interest Statement:** Macken Murphy works as a contractor creating social media content for Qoves, a company that sells personalized beauty advice. He receives a part-time salary for his role and will likely receive shares in the company in the future. Qoves had no involvement in the design, execution, analysis, or interpretation of this study. The remaining authors declare no other competing interests.

**Objective:** Men are more reluctant than women to engage with psychotherapy. Incels—an online community of involuntary celibates—have been identified as needing mental health intervention. Despite high rates of depression, suicidality, and social isolation, little is formally known about their therapy experiences or attitudes.

**Methods:** We conducted qualitative discourse analysis of 100 psychotherapy discussion threads from incels.is, the largest incel forum. We coded experiences of 89 users who reported attending
therapy, analyzing therapist gender, motivation, and satisfaction. Inductive thematic analysis identified community attitudes toward psychotherapy.

**Results:** Among incels reporting therapy experiences, 70.8% reported negative outcomes whereas only 7.9% reported satisfaction. None of those forced into therapy (25.8%) reported positive outcomes. Preliminary analysis suggested higher satisfaction with male therapists (16.7% vs. 7.1% for female). Thematic analysis revealed barriers to therapeutic engagement: (1) "blackpill" ideology attributing sexual/romantic deprivation and associated mental health issues to immutable factors; (2) conspiracy theories framing therapy as designed to sedate and control; (3) view of therapy as female-biased and hostile to men; (4) practical concerns including cost, privacy fears, and hospitalization.

**Conclusions:** Incels present intervention challenges due to their fatalistic worldview, institutional distrust, and extreme misogyny. Findings suggest potential benefits of male therapists and clearly defined therapeutic goals that acknowledge but do not promise to resolve romantic concerns.

**Keywords:** involuntary celibates, psychotherapy, masculinity, mental health, therapy resistance, online communities

**Clinical Significance of this Article:** This study is the first to thoroughly document incel attitudes towards psychotherapy as well as their reported therapy experiences (i.e., motivation, satisfaction). Our analyses reveal widespread dissatisfaction, resistance, and hostility towards therapy, identifying several barriers to intervention. These emotional and ideological hurdles should be taken into account if successful therapy is to be conducted with incel patients.
## Objective

Men tend to be more reluctant than women to engage with psychotherapy and other mental health services (Addis & Mahalik, 2003; Shepherd et al., 2023). Most explanations argue that current Western cultural ideals of masculinity, with their emphasis on self-reliance and emotional control, hinder men's attempt at seeking help (Addis & Mahalik, 2003; Englar-Carlson et al., 2010; Seidler et al., 2016). Others point out the lack of explicit prevention and outreach programs targeting men's mental health issues, or the lack of male psychotherapists (Shepherd et al., 2023). This issue is all the more pressing that male mental health is showing signs of worsening among younger generations (Haidt, 2024).

One group of young men in particular has been repeatedly singled out for its need of mental health intervention: the incel community (Broyd et al., 2023; Costello et al., 2022, 2025; Hunter et al., 2024; Maxwell et al., 2020; Sparks et al., 2022; Van Brunt & Taylor, 2020). This online-based global community of involuntary celibate men has grown in popularity over the past decade (Ribeiro et al., 2021), and received a lot of academic and media attention for its potential role in radicalizing young mass killers in Europe and North America (for a review of incel-related attacks, see Hoffman et al., 2020, but see Costello & Buss, 2023). It started as an online support group for romantically unsuccessful people of both sexes in the 1990s, and turned into a male-only community in the 2000s-2010s, before being banned from most mainstream social media platforms (Bachaud, 2025). Today, incels mostly congregate on community-specific forums, notorious for their open misogyny, racism, homophobia, and antisemitic conspiracy theories (Beauchamp, 2019). The dominant incel ideology is called “the blackpill*.” Typically, this philosophy includes, as core beliefs, that physical attractiveness is largely genetically determined and that men’s physical appearance is the decisive factor determining their sexual and romantic life (Radicalisation
Awareness Network, 2021). It follows from these two axioms, “that a man's dating and life outcomes generally rely on genetically determined traits” (“Scientific Blackpill,” n.d.). To be considered an incel by the community, one must therefore be a heterosexual man who desires a romantic/sexual relationship but is unable to enter one, usually with no past sexual experience (recourse to paid sex work notwithstanding) (Bachaud, 2024).

Qualitative discourse analyses have revealed the emotional distress present among incel communities, emphasizing rage and self-loathing (Labbaf, 2019), shame and resentment (Cottee, 2021), as well as helplessness and hopelessness in the cases of incel mass killers (Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Survey research has confirmed the severe mental health situation among incel respondents. Depression is commonplace, with a survey of 274 incels respondents finding that 95% report “some depression” and 37% self-report a formal clinical depression diagnosis (Moskalenko et al., 2022). Other studies using the PHQ-9 scale found that moderately severe and severe depressive symptoms were common among incels, with prevalence rates of 38.9% in a sample of 561 respondents (Costello et al., 2025). A controlled study also found higher rates of depression in the incel group (n = 72) using the DASS scale (Delaney et al., 2024). Furthermore, 43% of incel survey respondents (N = 561) scored moderate to high for anxiety on the GAD-7 scale (Costello et al., 2025). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is also much more prevalent among incels, with the largest survey to date (N = 561) finding that 30% of respondents met the threshold for clinical ASD referral (Costello et al., 2025). Suicidality is extremely high among incel communities too, as shown by the prevalence of suicide notes on incel forums (Daly & Laskovtsov, 2021), as well as widespread self-reports of suicidal ideation in a recent survey (N = 561), including daily suicidal thoughts for more than a fifth of respondents (Costello et al., 2025). Other concerning findings pertain to severe isolation, with 82% of incel survey respondents (N = 561) reporting never
interacting face-to-face with friends (Costello et al., 2025). Also of note are incels' low self-esteem and higher rates of insecure attachment styles (Sparks et al., 2024).

Many researchers have called for referring incels to mental health professionals, and for designing targeted interventions (Broyd et al., 2023; Costello et al., 2025; Maxwell et al., 2020; Sparks et al., 2022; Van Brunt & Taylor, 2020). However, there has been to our knowledge no thorough empirical assessment of incels' existing attitudes towards psychotherapy, nor of their experiences with mental health professionals. The only exception so far is a long-form 68-item survey of 274 self-identified incels, which comprised three items on therapy (Moskalenko et al., 2022). While 51% of respondents reported ever going to therapy, only 6% reported subsequent improvements in mental health, while the rest reported “no change” or even feeling “worse” as a result (15%). The present study aims at consolidating these findings via targeted qualitative analysis.

A cursory glance at incel forums should convince anyone that the community as a whole is extremely hostile towards clinical psychotherapy and psychiatry. Englar-Carlson et al. (2010) acknowledge the hurdles posed by men's specific reluctance to engage with psychotherapy, and advocate for therapy informed by “understanding the cultures of masculinity.” Along with Seidler et al. (2018), they call for sociologically-informed psychotherapy which recognizes the specific challenges to mental health intervention posed by different conceptions and experiences of masculinity (e.g., African American, working-class, gay). Incels represent a distinct culture of masculinity, which fosters defiance and hostility towards mental health professions. The present study aims to document the roots of this hostility, by exploring incel experiences, attitudes, and reluctance to engage with psychotherapy. It addresses two interrelated set of research questions, the first experiential and the second attitudinal:
- RQ1: What experiences do incels report with psychotherapy - including their motivations for seeking support, interactions with therapists, and outcomes?

- RQ2: What are the attitudes towards psychotherapy found within the incel community, and how do they relate to engagement with mental health services?

Answering those questions is a necessary step towards designing effective mental health therapy with incel patients—a highly vulnerable yet hostile demographic. In the discussion section, recommendations and directions for successful therapy with incels are suggested.

## Methods

Incels are reluctant to engage with researchers or journalists and very protective of their privacy and anonymity (Bachaud, 2025, pp. 90-91, 469-470). Consequently, there is little available interview or survey data to learn firsthand about incel experiences with therapy. However, psychotherapy is a widely discussed topic on incel forums. On these forum discussions, incels recall their therapy sessions, while others comment on them, and everyone shares their general opinion on psychotherapy. This is ideal to understand incel attitudes towards therapy, and this is also the best available data to understand their therapy experiences.

We conducted our analysis on incels.is, the largest incel forum (with more than 30,000 members as of writing in May 2025). We searched for Discussion threads with either “therapy” or “therapist” in their titles, then sorted threads by date of first post. On March 4-6, 2025, we collected the 100 most recent threads, to get the most up-to-date assessment of community attitudes. Six of these posts were excluded on a case-by-case basis, as they did not deal with psychotherapy (e.g., about physical therapy or “therapy pets”). Six older additional threads were collected through a
similar method, until the final corpus of 100 threads about psychotherapy was constituted on March
21, 2025.

The corpus contains 2,430 forum posts written by 617 pseudonymous user accounts. The threads analyzed were created between March 12, 2024, and March 12, 2025. To answer RQ1 and RQ2, an inductive thematic discourse analysis was conducted. All threads were uploaded into NVivo for qualitative coding, with no pre-established categories to let patterns emerge from the data after careful analysis. Subcodes were then re-grouped into larger codes, which constitute the main themes (for similar methods in incel research, see Burns & Boislard, 2024). Underlying this analysis was the ethnographic knowledge of our first author, who has been studying incels for the past five years (see Bachaud, 2025).

To supplement the qualitative analysis and specifically address RQ1, an incel patient dataset was also constituted. During analysis, each user who unambiguously reported attending mental health therapy (i.e., psychiatry, psychotherapy, group therapy, or mental health hospitalization) was systematically added to the dataset (n = 89). Then for each of those former or current patients, two independent raters coded categorical variables based on all the information disclosed in their posts. These variables included gender of therapist (Man/Woman/Unspecified); motivation to attend (Forced/Convinced/Volitional/Unspecified-Unclear); and reported satisfaction level (Negative/Positive/Unspecified-Unclear). Interrater reliability and interrater percentage agreement were calculated using 79 of the 89 incel's posts (see R code in Appendix 5), as the two qualitative coders (LB & MM) used the first ten incels as a training subsample to calibrate their understanding of how to apply the coding dictionary (reproduced in Appendix 1). After independently coding the remaining posts (see result details in Appendix 2), the two coders discussed to reach an agreement
for every case of disagreement throughout the dataset. The anonymized dataset with all coded
variables is provided in Appendix 3.

All the threads analyzed are freely and publicly available without registering on the forum.
However, since the forum is well-known and indexed, and given the sensitive nature of the mental
health issues discussed therein, strict confidentiality measures were applied. Firstly, as is
customary within digital sociology, usernames were kept anonymous. Secondly, each quote
 excerpted for this article was run through LLM Claude 3.7 (Sonnet). The AI model was asked to
rephrase the quote in a similar tone to avoid re-identification of users while maintaining original
meaning. The rephrasing was checked manually, to ensure that meaning and tone were unchanged.
In two instances the content was so violent that it violated the LLM’s rules, and was thus rephrased
by the authors. To be clear, all analyses were performed on the original online content, while LLM
modifications are purely for the purpose of the presentation of relevant anonymized quotes in this
article. “Words specific to incels’ distinctive jargon are marked with an asterisk, and their
definitions are provided in Appendix 5 (incel lexicon).

## Results

### RQ1: Incel Experiences with Therapy

#### Descriptive Statistics

In total, 89 anonymous forum posters reported past or current engagement with
psychotherapy. For these incel patients’ satisfaction with their therapy experiences, excluding the
training subsample, the two raters agreed on 84.8% of cases, and Cohen’s κ indicated this
agreement was substantial (κ = .69, p < .001). Out of these 89, 61 (68.5%) exhibit negative attitudes
towards their therapy experience, with a majority reporting frustration or anger at the absence of
tangible mental health improvement, and others even blaming therapy for worsening their mental health. Only 7 respondents were somewhat satisfied with their time in therapy (7.9%), while the remaining 23.6% of testimonies did not include sufficient details to allow for coding. These results align with previous survey findings from Moskalenko et al. (2022). In that study, a small minority of incels reported satisfaction with their therapy experiences, while a majority found it useless or even detrimental.

The gender of one's therapist is a very prominent feature of incel discussions on therapy. For this variable, excluding the training subsample, the two raters agreed on 89.9% of cases, with excellent agreement (κ = .84, *p* < .001). Here we found that 28 incels who had followed therapy report having a female therapist (31.5%), 18 a male therapist (20.2%), and the rest of the testimonies did not unambiguously specify therapist gender (48.3%).

Finally, for incel's motivation to attend therapy, excluding the training subsample, the two raters independently agreed on 84.8% of cases, and Cohen's κ indicated this agreement was substantial (κ = .73, *p* < .001). Remarkably, a quarter of incel patients (25.8%) report being “forced” into attending therapy. This aligns with research showing that men often believe they are coerced into attending therapy (Englar-Carlson et al., 2010), which is associated with poorer outcomes (Snyder & Anderson, 2009). Half of those mention being forced (and sometimes blackmailed) by their parents, or more rarely by the authorities, after attempting suicide, or as a required step to collect government benefits. Four respondents (4.5%) report being convinced by a third party, without clear indication of coercion. It is much harder to determine whether one's involvement with therapy was voluntary, although 8 incels unambiguously specify that they sought out mental health assistance themselves (9.0%). In a majority of cases, motivation for engaging was not clearly specified (60.7%). The anonymized dataset with all coded variables is provided in Appendix 3.
Potential Drivers of Patient Satisfaction

<caption>Figure 1: Incel's Reported Therapy Satisfaction by Therapist Gender</caption>

*Error bars = 95% confidence intervals using the Wilson score method.*

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

Figure 1 above presents the descriptive statistics for reported therapy experiences by therapist gender. While statistical power was limited due to small sample sizes and very low rates of positive experiences (i.e., 2/28 [Female] vs 3/18 [Male]), the observed pattern was consistent with the hypothesis that participants reported higher satisfaction with male therapists (discussed below). However, after running a one-tailed Fisher's exact test to assess this unidirectional hypothesis, the result was not significant (*p* = .29, OR = 2.54, 95% CI: 0.26-33.7), though the wide confidence interval indicates considerable uncertainty around the effect size estimate.
Additionally, none of the 23 participants who recalled being forced into therapy reported positive experiences (0%, 95% CI: 0-14.3%), compared to an overall positive rate of 10.6% (7/66) for those who were not forced (CI: 5.2-20.3%). While this difference did not reach statistical significance due to low satisfaction rates (Fisher's exact test, *p* = .11), the large effect size (Cohen's *h* = 0.66) suggests a meaningful clinical difference warranting further investigation.

*Exploring Incel Patients' Positive Experiences*

The seven patients who reported somewhat positive therapy experiences wrote a total of 44 forum posts. By closely analyzing these posts, we can identify factors which were conducive to establishing rapport between patients and therapists and to addressing mental health issues.

Firstly, these incels did not seem to enter therapy with the expectation that it would solve all their problems, or that it would help them leave inceldom (i.e., lose their virginity). They instead report going to therapists for specific conditions such as OCD, PTSD, loneliness, or hypochondria. They acknowledge that therapy helped alleviate these mental health issues, although they remind others that therapy cannot be a miracle cure, and that it cannot be expected to solve sexual frustration or make one more romantically attractive: "Never ask some normie* therapist for impossible shit, like 'hey doc, make me a young Chad* with money', it doesn't work that way." Even though these few incels report somewhat positive therapy experiences, none of them is overly enthusiastic about psychotherapy's ability to address incel-specific issues. According to this user, one of the only psychotherapy advocates on the forum, it should just be seen as a useful coping mechanism to enjoy a life of involuntary celibacy: "What's actually useful about therapy: it helps you deal with a life without sex. Therapists can't transform you into someone who gets laid more."
Four of these seven testimonies specify that the therapist was male. Some mention that they appreciated qualities in their therapists that incels tend to associate with men: intelligence, lack of political correctness, and blunt honesty ("had this one really good therapist who didn't care about being nice or whatever, he just told me exactly what he thought about my views and my life"). In fact, some explicitly attribute the success of their therapy to their therapists' gender: "He was the best and honestly helped me a ton, went to him for a year. but every woman therapist was useless and I quit after a few sessions (even though I gave them a fair shot)." Even the aforementioned therapy advocate recognizes that therapy for incels cannot work with female or politically correct liberal men. As for the user who explains appreciating sessions with his female therapist, he acknowledges that this is due to his romantic/sexual attraction towards her: "My therapist I think is really attractive and pretty nerdy. I don't receive any interest from women normally, so having one female I chat with regularly has actually been pretty decent."

In summary, although they personally report satisfaction, these incels embrace common community beliefs: i.e., therapy is not effective at solving inceldom and is at best a "coping" strategy, and male therapists are to be preferred over female therapists. They, however, do not share the blatant hostility of other users for mental health professionals, nor the conspiracy theories embraced by many.

## Exploring Incels' Negative Experiences

When incels come to a therapist's practice, if they manage to overcome the shame caused by the stigma around virginity, they will likely want to address their involuntary celibacy. Indeed, it is almost by definition seen by incel patients as the root cause of their mental health issues. However, psychotherapists may not be prepared to address the romantic and sexual concerns that incels prioritize. According to testimonies from incel patients, therapists seemed puzzled and
unable to address the issue of late virginity: e.g., “Harsh when I mentioned to the therapist that I was a 30-year-old virgin she had no idea how to respond just sat there silent and then changed the subject”; “He just nods and goes ‘damn’ and has no clue what to say.”

Furthermore, some incels report being infuriated by the dating advice provided by their therapist, which they view as platitudinous and unhelpful. Indeed, incel blackpill ideology emerged as a reaction to such dating advice, known in the community as the “bluepill*.” The incel wiki (incels.wiki) defines the bluepill as what the “normie* fakestream media, similar conventional sources, and associated platitudes [...] have to say about the dating scene” (“Bluepill,” n.d.). Incels use this umbrella term to designate common tropes that directly clash with the blackpill’s fatalism: optimism about dating, the idea that there “is always someone out there,” and that looks do not matter if one has an attractive personality. This sort of optimistic advice is a common locus of conflict between incel patients and their therapists (and with non-incels in general, see (Maxwell et al., 2020). For example, this incel recalls trying to convince his therapist that he was ugly, and that looks played a part in romantic success, which she allegedly kept denying: “I then switched tactics and tried to get her to at least admit that good-looking people have dating advantages, which should honestly be obvious even to bluepillers, and the foid* claimed attractiveness was totally subjective and said she didn’t find Brad Pitt attractive.”

Consequently, most incel patients report that the therapeutic process was useless for them: “The talk therapy sessions accomplished nothing with the roughly 30 therapists I saw”; “I saw three different therapists (one was supposedly a "psychotherapist" but they might as well all be identical from my perspective), and none of them were useful. Counseling and psychology couldn’t help me with my dating struggles.” As we discuss below, this is mostly caused by the incel perception that their dating issues are caused by immutable and/or external factors, which therapy is simply unable
to address. Beyond this perception of uselessness, which is almost unanimous among incels reporting negative therapy experiences, a minority of incels even blame therapy for worsening their mental health.

## RQ2: Incel Attitudes Towards Psychotherapy

### "No therapy for your face": Why Blackpilled Incels Reject Psychotherapy

In blackpill ideology, incels attribute their celibacy to features which they consider to be universally repellent to women. Some insist on height, some on ethnicity, and some on their autism for example. To each of these features corresponds a label and archetype of incel, e.g., “shortcel” for height, “currycel” for Indian ancestry, or “spergcel” for autism. The blackpill is particularly fatalistic, as incels believe that, being born with these traits, they “lost the genetic lottery” and are therefore doomed to a life of celibacy and sexual deprivation (Radicalisation Awareness Network, 2021). These traits tend to be gene-based and immutable, and other traits like obesity, which people can more easily modify, are thus often not considered as valid causes of inceldom within the community (Bachaud, 2024).

The blackpill’s strong genetic determinism and focus on appearance (height, face, skin color, etc.) has a massive influence on incels’ sense of self. While most of them report some form of mental health issue, these are usually seen as consequences of sexual rejection and deprivation, which are themselves caused by immutable innate traits. In summary, most blackpilled incels subscribe to the explanatory causal model schematized in Figure 2 below.
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: The Blackpill's Causal Model of Mental Health and Life Satisfaction</figcaption></figure>

*Note: Money and status, represented here as moderators, are sometimes held to be determining factors for dating success in blackpill ideology, albeit much less so than looks.*

This simplistic framework does not allow for much nuance and severely hinders therapy-seeking among incels. Indeed, since mental health issues are thought to be a mere consequence of sexual rejection, incels repeatedly argue that psychotherapy cannot address the deep genetic and physical causes which make them unattractive and thus unhappy. A motto which surfaces time and time again is “no therapy for your face” or “no therapy for your height.” There is widespread agreement among incels that the causes of inceldom are so potent and immutable that no amount of therapy could ever address them, e.g.: “Therapy can’t fix your bone structure or make you any taller”; “Sessions are worthless for people like us since we can’t actually solve our real issue, I need cosmetic procedures and a neurotypical brain.”
The blackpill is a potent set of beliefs whose inherent fatalism deters most help-seeking behaviors. According to a survey on incels.is (N = 272), 94.9% of users believe in the blackpill, and 71.3% believe that their sexual deprivation will remain permanent (Speckhard et al., 2021). When, in spite of their reluctance, some incels decide to engage with psychotherapy, they are thus coming to the sessions with a strong explanatory framework for their life situation and mental health. This makes them very resistant to alternative explanations potentially offered by therapists, e.g.: "My issues are legitimate and have been around for many years. I've spent time thinking about them and explored every possible answer since my teen years. No way some counselor will offer anything I haven't already considered myself."

Often, the blackpill's fatalism directly clashes with therapists' assessments, which tend to be more growth-oriented, solution-seeking, and optimistic. In most cases, this challenging of the incel worldview is met with anger, as therapists are accused of "gaslighting" incel patients. Sometimes, incels even try to "blackpill" their therapist, i.e., to convince them of the immutability of their situation: "I Blackpilled* my therapist so now she realizes it's completely over for me, I showed her all the statistics and evidence."

These analyses reveal that incels could prove to be a difficult population for psychotherapy intervention. Indeed, they are extremely self-reflexive and have pre-established mental models and causal explanations for their situation. These explanations (i.e., "the blackpill") structure their sense of self and their community engagement, and can be fiercely defended when challenged. Moreover, some incels have a strong interest in science leading some to see their beliefs as supported by the scientific literature (Bachaud, 2025). Some therapeutic modalities, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, focus on encouraging patients to begin using evidence to challenge and evaluate thoughts and beliefs (Beck, 2020). Incels pre-existing relationship with "evidence" may make such
interventions all the more challenging for therapists, particularly if they are unaware of how the research incels refer to is cherry-picked and misinterpreted.

## Defiance and Conspiracy Theories

One of the most common and damaging beliefs about psychotherapy circulating on the forum is that therapy is a mere scam. Given the ubiquitous blackpill beliefs about the uselessness of therapy, the commercial nature of the patient/therapist relationship is often taken as irretractable proof that psychotherapy is an illegitimate and unscrupulous industry: "'counselors' are basically fancy scam artists lol." This trope is extremely popular on the forum and is often associated with criticisms of pharmaceutical companies, which are thought to be behind this scam: "The psychiatric industry is a scam designed by big pharma to take advantage of people with mental health issues." Indeed, psychiatric medication is almost unanimously framed on the forum as harmful, with some incels testifying about the undesirable side effects they have experienced with them: "it kind of screwed me over too honestly I was prescribed antidepressants as a teen and remained on them for several years and it didn't help my mind at all"; "I'm basically asexual now. literally can't even feel attraction to women anymore and have zero sex drive."

These beliefs can lead to various conspiracy theories about psychotherapy. Chief among these are antisemitic conspiracy theories, which hold that the psychotherapy and pharmaceutical industries are controlled by "Jewish elites." In fact, so popular is this belief that psychiatric medication is often dubbed "joopills", "jewpills", or "kikepills" on the forum: e.g., "Therapy is one big scam organized by pharmaceutical companies so they can get people hooked on jewpills and keep them returning for money."
Often, this conspiracy theory goes further, as these pills are seen as a way for the “Jewish elites” to weaken and feminize (i.e., “castrate”) men, and in particular incels, so that they accept their subaltern social position: “Their goal is to give out Jew meds to castrate and sedate lonely men so they wont look for revenge”; “They want us to be Zombified by taking joopills” (for analysis of similar incel antisemitic conspiracy theories about endocrine-disrupting chemicals, see Bachaud, 2025, pp. 335-337). The side-effects of psychiatric medication are here seen as an indication that the “elites” are trying to sedate their population into becoming docile workers: “Psychiatry is not here to help you. It is there to brainwash you into becoming a productive goy through ‘meds’ and ‘jewpills.’”

This conspiracy theory has many variants, which might not all be antisemitic. Sometimes, therapists themselves are seen as the orchestrators of the scam, sedating people so that they keep on spending their money on therapy sessions. And in most instances, the obscure force behind this is simply referred to as (1) “the system”; (2) “society”; or (3) not even explicitly named, as illustrated by the following examples: (1) “[T]hese therapists only care that you stay obedient to the system and don’t cause any trouble”; (2) “Therapy serves no purpose, only to shape submissive people for a society that just wants to use you”; (3) “So you can get brainwashed and stop seeing reality for what it is, be a better slave.”

Given the popularity of these conspiracy theories, it is perhaps no surprise that we could not find any positive trope or belief about therapy or psychiatry in our qualitative analyses of the forum content. These are simply seen by many incels as anathema to their community, as a form of social and chemical control which they fear, resent, and are often forced into. It is unclear how mental health professionals could address these broad conspiracy theories, which are deeply rooted in the community's worldview. Below, we identify some additional incel concerns and beliefs about
therapy which might prevent them from seeking mental health assistance. Those are more practical concerns, which might be easier to address.

## Additional Concerns Dissuading Therapy-Seeking: Cost, Privacy, Hospitalization, and Shame

Our analyses revealed that Incels share common fears and concerns about seeking mental health intervention. A recurring practical concern is the price of therapy sessions, as in the example of this poster who was hesitant to engage with therapy: "Family and psych teacher told me I should do it but I'm skeptical since it's expensive as hell. They expect me to shell out $200 every WEEK just to talk about feelings and crap." Given the reigning skepticism regarding the benefits of psychotherapy, session prices are often seen as a major hurdle for attending, if not as an outright proof that therapy is a scam. This seems to be particularly salient for those incels who might want to attend: "Don't know about therapy, might try it...if it didn't cost anything. Not wasting hundreds of bucks just to hear about coping strategies." In fact, several incels report attending therapy solely because it was subsidized by parents, government benefits, or insurance.

Another salient concern is privacy. Indeed, as the community has inspired some mass shootings since the 2010s, it has come under increasing scrutiny by police and antiterrorism forces. As a consequence, several posters report feeling unable to speak their minds during sessions, e.g.: "Therapy was total BS. You can't even be honest about your real daily problems because they'd probably mark you as dangerous to society or whatever cum crum cum cum crum* bureaucratic nonsense they do." Privacy concerns include fear of the therapists' notes being leaked, hacked, or used in court. But the most common fear is that of being reported to the police for radicalization or terrorism: "Be careful. Therapists will report you to the police if you're both depressed and misogynistic. Happened to someone I knew." Therapists are often portrayed as direct informants to the authorities
"("fancy police snitches")", prompting this forum poster to take confidentiality measures to attend therapy: "Gave them a made-up name, wrong address, and paid in a way they can't trace so they can't report me to police."

Along the same lines, being sent to a psychiatric hospital is also a common fear that incels report when considering seeking mental health therapy, e.g.: "wonder if I should just be completely honest about everything, would they put me on some watchlist or lock me up in a mental hospital?" Even for those engaged in therapy, this fear prevents them from opening up, such as this poster who did not dare share his violent thoughts during therapy: "Barely kept myself from cracking up or I would've ended up in the loony bin lol."

Lastly, a surprisingly high number of incels seem convinced that psychotherapists, in particular women, are secretly mocking them: "pretty convinced that women therapists are secretly laughing at you if you're their incel client." A recurring trope is that of the female therapist laughing about incels with her own boyfriend: "Bet as soon as you walk out they call their hot boyfriend and laugh about you." This attitude is grounded in the incel worldview, which strictly differentiates between incels and the rest of the population (i.e., "normies*" or "sex-havers"). Incels see these normies with envy for having regular sex, but also with hatred for not empathizing with the hardships of being an involuntary celibate. Compounded with the existing stigma around male virginity, this makes incels approach therapy with the expectation that they will be automatically judged and shamed by their therapist for being virgins. In fact, on incels.is, psychotherapists are routinely portrayed as devoid of empathy and understanding.

## Lack of Understanding and Empathy
There are two related beliefs on these issues circulating on the incel forum. The first one being that therapist, as “normies*”, cannot relate to the life of an incel, and are thus unable to understand their situation: "Going to therapy sessions has done nothing for me, these therapists and mental health workers just don't get it, nobody outside this community understands what it's like being unable to find a partner." A more widespread version of this trope holds that not only do therapists not understand, but moreover that they simply do not care about incels' lives.

The empathy of psychotherapists is questioned by no less than thirty different posters. The dominant view is that psychotherapy is just a job, and that therapists thus have no genuine interest in helping out people: "They just talk to you because it's their job. In real life they'd hate you and treat you like garbage." The verbs "pretend" and "care" are a recurring feature of these comments, who agree on the fact that therapists are just faking empathy for money.

Here, as in their discussions about sex work, incels put a lot of emphasis on craving genuine and sincere relationships. Indeed, even if a minority of incels (called "escortcels") satisfy their sexual urges through paid sex work, most reject this option because they desire a non-commercial sexual relationship driven by genuine attraction (i.e., "being chosen"). Likewise with psychotherapy, the commercial nature of the interaction drives incels to see the therapeutic alliance as compromised and fake: "Paying for therapy is pointless since you're basically buying someone's attention and real concern can't be purchased." While this analogy between psychotherapy and sex work might seem unusual, it is in fact relatively common in incel discussions on therapy, where female therapists are almost always sexualized.

## Therapist Gender
A recurring topic of discussion concerns the gender of one's therapist. Male therapists are almost unanimously preferred, as in the following piece of advice: "Avoid women therapists completely, if you're gonna try therapy find a male one who actually gets what it's like to be a guy and won't feed you that 'learn to be happy by yourself' garbage". Female therapists are widely portrayed on the forum as uncaring, incapable to empathize with male experiences, indoctrinated by feminism, inherently repulsed by unattractive men, or simply as incompetent and stupid. This raises doubts regarding the possibility of establishing successful therapeutic alliances between incel patients and female psychotherapists.

Moreover, when female therapists are discussed, they are almost always sexualized. Since incels see virginity as the defining feature of their identity, as well as their social and mental hardships, female therapists' sexuality is often fantasized as a potential “cure” for inceldom, e.g.: "Female therapists should offer sex to fix my depression". One finds dozen iterations of this trope on the forum, where incels revel in graphic sexual ideation regarding female therapists, including six mentions of rape (e.g., "Therapists RAPE your wallet, so why not RAPE them in exchange?"). Female psychotherapists are also often unfavorably compared to sex workers, as both offer expensive fixed-time sessions supposed to make one feel better: "If you're gonna throw away tons of cash for someone pretending to care about your problems, might as well spend it on a hooker."

Sometimes this misogyny and objectification might translate into behavior. Accounts from the forum include a patient who claims to have solicited sexual favors from his therapist: "Told my therapist and care manager straight up that I wanted to hook up with them and said that was the only way they could actually help me. Ended up getting kicked out of the place and slapped with a restraining order." Another poster conferred with his fellow users on the best way to covertly take a picture of his female therapist to use as masturbation material. Lastly, one claims to have slapped
his therapist when he was eighteen: "got mad and hit my roastie* therapist - she wasn't even bothering me lol but I was pissed at my parents for making me go to this useless stuff and needed to take my anger out somehow lol."

## Therapy as a Female-Biased and Feminist Profession

In a recent survey (N = 561), incels ranked “feminists” as the community’s biggest enemy, followed by “the political left”(Costello et al., 2025). On incels.is, therapy is routinely associated with those two enemies—e.g., “therapy = pay insane amounts per hour to talk to some stupid liberal feminist toilet* who secretly despises you.” As college-educated and mostly female professionals, therapists are automatically assumed to be liberal and feminist, which is a powerful deterrent for incels to seek therapy. These beliefs are particularly aggravated by the use of words from feminist theory in official APA guidelines (such as “patriarchy”), or by concepts such as “toxic masculinity” which are seen as hostile towards men: "Therapists are deeply trained in current progressive ideologies that make men feel guilty for having masculine emotions (anger, assertiveness, and rational thinking) and frame any behavior involving these as negative even though that's not true." Thus, our corpus contains several examples of feminist pronouncements by mental health professionals, whether in their official literature, or on their private social media, which are taken by incels as evidence of the field's feminist bias and hostility towards men.

This ties in the broader idea that therapy is simply not meant to help men, a very common belief on the forum, e.g.: “therapy is a female-centered profession and biased toward them. It’s only designed to help women.” This *leitmotiv* is often complemented by claims that (1) women’s issues are mild or illegitimate compared to incels’ (“Therapy is most effective for privileged white females who don’t deal with real problems”); (2) women therefore simply go to therapy to hear someone reassure them and to feel better about themselves (“Therapy is a con. It’s just validation for
females”). Often, this view of women’s reliance on therapy is contrasted with the more intractable issues faced by incels, which therapy is deemed incapable of solving: "Therapy isn't made for guys like us, it's designed for attention-seeking foids* who play victim to get their fake ‘issues’ ‘solved’ by someone saying ‘you're totally fine!’ Counselors can't get you a girlfriend so they can't fix being single, they're worthless for men's actual problems.”

## Discussion

### Towards Effective Psychotherapy with Incel Patients

The qualitative analysis of incels' experiences with and attitudes towards therapy reveals a particularly challenging landscape for intervention with this community. At best, psychotherapy and psychiatry are widely regarded as useless. At worst, they might even be considered malevolent and harmful. Moreover, incels have a suite of inhibitions and fears which make them reluctant to engage with mental health professionals. In spite, of this, given their life histories and precarious mental health, many have in fact attended therapy, albeit not always of their own will (25.8% report being forced). Unsurprisingly, they overwhelmingly report negative experiences with the therapeutic process (68.5%). These negative experiences then spur more hostility, as those disgruntled incels then report their experiences to others online, and loudly advocate against psychotherapy. In this section, we reflect on potential solutions to address this challenging state of affairs.

Firstly, the analyses presented in this paper suggest that male therapists should be preferred when dealing with incel patients. While this suggestion of course does not imply accepting the misogynistic and depreciatory view of female therapists endorsed by the community, it stems from the acknowledgment that this view has profound consequences on incel thinking and behavior.
Simply put, the extreme misogyny of the community does not seem conducive to the establishment of a successful cross-gender therapeutic alliance, as female therapists are automatically suspected by incels of being feminist, biased, hostile, incompetent, uncaring, mocking, etc. Furthermore, they are also routinely sexualized, thus diverting attention from the therapeutic process. Lastly, we also have also uncovered evidence that interacting with incel patients might put female therapists at higher risk of being targeted with verbal, if not physical, abuse. It must be noted however that incels have listed “feminists” and “the political left” slightly above women as their main enemies in a recent survey study (Costello et al., 2025), suggesting that the suspiciousness against women described here might be confounded by general hostility towards progressives, as exemplified in this testimony of an incel who recalls being disappointed at his male therapist’s perceived liberal appearance: “I came in and it was a total feminist cuck*. Defeats the whole purpose of requesting a male therapist.”

Secondly, given incels' distinctive worldview, it appears crucial for therapists to understand the core beliefs of the blackpill, especially since incel patients themselves might be reluctant to disclose these beliefs for fear of being seen as radical or dangerous. We hope the present study will contribute to this, but there are many other ways for mental health professionals to be informed, as incels have been extensively covered in the press (Beauchamp, 2019), popular science books (Sugiura, 2021), academic publications (see a review of incel research in [Bachaud, 2025, pp.79-93]), government reports (Radicalisation Awareness Network, 2021), or a TV documentary (Rawles, 2019). At the same time, therapists should be particularly mindful about building empathy with incel clients and understanding their frame of reference. Because incels typical believe that society hates them and doesn't empathize with them (Costello et al., 2022; Costello & Thomas,
2025) additional effort needs to be made to ensure that the core conditions are met within the therapeutic relationship (Rogers, 1957).

Thirdly, when treating incel patients, psychotherapists who are not specialized in romantic and sexual matters might want to explicitly acknowledge it. If incels come to conventional therapy with the expectation that they will find a romantic/sexual partner, they are likely to be disappointed. In fact, our analyses revealed that those who reported positive experiences seemed to specifically be those who did not come in with that expectation. Consequently, therapists might want to engage in a therapeutic alliance with clearly defined and limited objectives, such as dealing with anxiety or depression. Such objectives could be framed as serving wider goals of coping better with singlehood, or building resilience to the challenges of finding a relationship. This follows recommendations from the academic literature on fostering engagement with male patients, which often insists on establishing a structured, transparent, goal-oriented “gameplan” for intervention (these recommendations are reviewed in [Seidler et al., 2018]). This is not without its challenges, incels are very avoidant in attachment and are almost personality-disorder-like in their schemas (Young, 2002). These types of issues often require long-term treatment from several different angles. Incels may also arrive at therapy in a stage of precontemplation which would need to be worked through before coherent goals can be set (Prochaska & Velicer, 1997) and motivation for change might need to be addressed through methods such as motivational interviewing (Rubak et al., 2005).

Many incels see virginity as the root cause of their mental health issues, leading to skepticism towards therapy which does not directly address the issue. This is why it is also important that therapists reflect on the sociological and psychological dimensions of virginity. Indeed, late sexual onset and adult virginity are on the rise in contemporary Western societies
(Twenge et al., 2017; Twenge & Park, 2019; Ueda et al., 2020). Regardless of their affiliation with the incel community, men who involuntarily undergo adult virginity experience a range of adverse psychosocial consequences, in terms of subjective wellbeing, self-esteem, anxiety, social adjustment, or sexual behavior (for a review of these correlational effects, see [Stijelja & Mishara, 2023]). Given recent sociodemographic trends, such patients will become more common, warranting increased attention from both psychology researchers and clinical practitioners.

Lastly, incels' reluctance and hostility towards therapy should not be understood in a
cultural vacuum. Scholars have argued that incels in fact embody contemporary trends of online
masculinity and misogyny, albeit in the most radical and extreme form (Tranchese & Sugiura,
2021). And they do not represent the only “culture of masculinity” where resistance to
psychotherapy is common (Seidler et al., 2016). Thus, the present findings call for increased
attention by mental health professionals towards men in general, both in terms of developing
gender-sensitive therapy, and in terms of outreach to address potential barriers that prevent men
from accessing mental health services (such as the “Real Men. Real Depression.” campaign in the
US, [Rochlen et al., 2006]). While such broad outreach might be unable to sway opinions among
the most ideologically driven incels found on the incels.is forum, it might help dispel common
misconceptions about therapy shared by incels and other cultures of masculinity (i.e.,
“therapy/depression is for women”; or “therapy is for people with no real issues”), ultimately
paving the way for a cultural climate more favorable to men’s help-seeking. Indeed, incels are part
of a broader online galaxy of men’s communities known as the “manosphere,” with which they
share certain tropes and beliefs (Ribeiro et al., 2021; Bachaud, 2025, pp. 67-79). Although virtually
nothing is known about mental health in non-incel manosphere groups, gender-sensitive therapy
might also foster therapy engagement and positive outcomes with those communities.
## Limitations and Future Research

Our data allowed to code for a dataset containing patient satisfaction, therapist gender, and motivation to attend therapy. Unfortunately, the small counts and low event rates for each of those variables did not allow for robust statistical testing of hypotheses. Replication with larger sample sizes is needed to assess whether the preliminary directional findings identified in this study hold: male therapists seem associated with higher incel patient satisfaction, while being forced to attend therapy seems to result in negative experiences.

Our selection procedure focused exclusively on forum threads mentioning therapy, which de facto excluded from our analyses incels who have no interest and no opinion regarding therapy. Moreover, such analyses of forum posts only concern active community members, but miss all the potential incels who visit the forum but never post there (called “lurkers”). Additionally, all incel discourse analysis is to be taken with a grain of salt, as these communities have a distinct culture of exaggeration, bravado, or provocation, known as “trolling” or “shitposting” (Hoffman et al., 2020, 577). Lastly, it might be that the almost unanimous hostility towards psychotherapy documented in the present study partly results from a conformity bias, where more positive opinions would not be voiced for fear of condemnation and/or mockery.

Incels can leave the community by losing their virginity, by reneging on their ideology, or both. By studying the incel forum, one might miss the trajectory of those ex-incels and only focus on individuals with the most radical views and the poorest mental health, i.e., those for whom therapy did not work—a sort of reverse survivor bias. Recently, there has been budding academic interest for the r/incelexit Reddit forum, where former incels congregate and talk about their journey out of the community (Burns & Boislard, 2024; Osuna, 2024). Some testimonies of former incels anecdotally mention therapy as a facilitating factor to leaving inceldom (Burns & Boislard,
2024; Hintz & Baker, 2021). The role of therapy in the trajectories of these former incels should be further scrutinized, which might lead to more optimistic conclusions than the present study which focused on individuals deeply entrenched in the community's belief system.

Social science can help psychotherapists by documenting patients' radicalization patterns, life trajectories, or community beliefs—as was the case with the present study. However, discourse analysis or surveys cannot provide conclusive clinical evidence by themselves. Ultimately, building trust and establishing rapport with incel patients is necessary to design and test effective mental health interventions. Given the reigning hostility towards psychotherapy we documented on the main incel forum, this would require ideologically sensitive outreach towards the community, underpinned by a strong commitment to guarantee privacy and a clear stance regarding virginity and blackpill beliefs.

## Conclusion

We conducted the first thorough investigation of incel attitudes towards and experiences with psychotherapy. Analysis of posts on the largest incel forum revealed widespread distrust and hostility towards psychotherapy. Through inductive discourse analysis, we identified key themes underlying this hostility: (1) the blackpill belief that immutable factors determine one's dating success; (2) conspiracy theories about therapy as a scam designed to sedate and control men; (3) the perception of psychotherapy as a female-biased profession hostile to men; (4) practical concerns about costs, privacy, and fear of hospitalization.

Coding for categorical variables with the subset of incel posters who recall attending therapy (n = 89), we also found that 68.5% report negative experiences, and only 7.9% report being somewhat satisfied. Furthermore, a quarter of these patients recall being forced into attending
(25.8%), none of whom report positive experiences. Our findings also suggest that male therapists might be preferable, to establish a therapeutic alliance which is both helpful for patients and safe for mental health professionals.

Ultimately, this study reveals a population caught between desperate psychological need and profound ideological resistance to the very interventions designed to help. While the challenges are substantial, the minority of positive experiences documented here suggest that therapeutic engagement remains possible under specific conditions. Figure 3 below recapitulates these study's findings and suggestions regarding therapy engagement.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3: Barriers and Facilitators (+) to Incels' Engagement in Psychotherapy**</figcaption></figure>

Note: Barriers (-) are derived from the qualitative analysis, facilitators (+) are derived from the barriers as well as recommendations based on our clinical work with the population
As rates of late virginity increase among younger generations, with some of these young men joining the incel community, developing effective approaches to reach this vulnerable population becomes increasingly urgent—both for their own wellbeing and for broader public safety concerns. We call on concerned psychotherapists to develop an understanding of incel ideology, the psychological impact of male late virginity experiences, and contemporary masculinities, as prerequisites to establishing trustful and productive therapeutic interventions. Future research should examine intervention strategies informed by these findings and investigate the influence of therapy on community exit trajectories.

**Competing Interests:** The authors declare no competing interest.

**Funding:** There is no specific source of funding to declare for the present study.

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