Men’s Mental Health Month
Did you know that November was Men’s Mental Health Month? I did, but it seems that a lot of men didn’t!
That lack of knowledge has sparked a whole chain of events, which I will share with you soon. So this month l want to do my own little bit to talk about men and their mental health…
Let’s start with some stats…
According to the Mental Health Foundation around one in eight men have a mental health problem. This could be something like depression, anxiety or panic disorder.
Three times as many men as women die by suicide.
Men are less likely to access therapy than women. Only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men.
How does seeing that in black and white make you feel?
For me, it’s really shocking. I’ve always talked about my mental health, to anyone who will listen. In fact, there is nothing that I love more than doing talks about my mental health journey! That sounds pretty up my own backside, but my drive is to get people to talk about how they feel. That is a whole lot easier when it’s a room full of women.
With men, it’s much harder. There are many reasons for this, but a lot of it boils down to stereotypes.
Whilst we are starting to challenge the traditional stereotypes for both men and women, but there is still an immense amount of pressure on men to conform to the standards that society sets for them. How many times do we use phrases like ‘man up’, or expect the men in our lives to be the strong ones?
This is particularly damaging when it comes to mental health.
This increases the chance of men not seeking support, which ultimately has led to the stats that we see above. Of course, this is a generalisation and there are men who will seek support, such as talking therapies or medication. However, they’re not the majority.
What do we do about it?
It’s all very good talking stats and giving reasons why men may struggle to accept support, but we need to also make sure that men feel comfortable in getting help, no matter what that means to them.
I know even from my own experiences with depression, anxiety, stress and burnout, that it took a lot of courage to take myself off to my GP, and I am clearly happy to talk about my mental health!
There are lots of initiatives springing up here in the UK such as things like Mentell and Andy’s Man Club which is amazing, but I still believe we need to do more.
The biggest thing that I think we can do is to normalise feeling this way. The easiest way to do that is for people to open up about how they feel. Of course, I am a long way down my mental health road. I talk a lot about riding the waves and accepting how I feel. But that is because I’ve been living this for over 30 years.
Not only that, we need to be prepared to listen to people when they are telling us they’re not OK. Particularly with men, it may have taken a lot of courage to just admit that things are not good. So imagine how it would feel if you’d just got the courage to open up about how you feel and it was brushed off. Not good eh?
As someone who is passionate about mental health in general, I want to do all that I can to support people. I would love to hear from you what you think about what is needed to get more men comfortable in talking about their mental health.
Feel free to get in touch, or find me on social media for a chat!
