The abstract version of Struwe's monotonicity trick developed by Jeanjean and Toland for functionals depending on a real parameter is strengthened in the sense that it provides, for almost every value of the parameter, the existence of a bounded almost symmetric Palais–Smale sequence at the mountain-pass level whenever a mild symmetry assumption is set on the energy functional. In addition, the whole theory is extended to the case of continuous functionals on Banach spaces, in the framework of non-smooth critical point theory.