The Men’s Mental Health Crisis – And Why it Matters

Men’s mental health is in crisis. Right now, men are suffering and dying.

As the world we live in becomes more immediate, more connected and more hectic, some men are opting out.

Some on a permanent basis.

What is happening? How long can we go on like this?

Let me ask you a question: Have you ever been told to ‘man up’ when facing problems?

Not very helpful is it? There’s only so much ‘sucking-it-up-and-getting-on-with-it’ you can take.

 

 

But ‘being’ is becoming harder and harder. These days we’re constantly connected all the time. Either we’re connected to our social media, our work or our families in some way.

What’s the result?

Men’s Mental Health is in Crisis

I started writing this post about getting space and being in the outdoors. But it quickly turned into something else.

Something bigger.

Something more important. (I’ll get to the outdoors in a future post)

The single biggest killer for dads is suicide. https://t.co/lUyHW6fX8R

— Neil M White 🇬🇧 (@ThisDadDoes) August 23, 2017

In a UK study, there were 6223 suicides in 2013. 78% of these were male (Source).

Seventy eight percent.

That’s 4,854 men dying at their own hands in one year. In one country.

That’s almost double the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 (Source).

Clearly we have an issue when men are dying needlessly in their thousands – on the scale of an international conflict.

If this was Ebola, we’d all be freaking out right now. Instead, male suicide becomes something that often goes unreported.

Or worse, it’s blamed on ‘toxic masculinity’ or the victim’s drug or alcohol habits (sufferers of PTSD are much more likely to drink heavily).

Even when researching for this blog post, a quick internet search for ‘men’s mental health stats’ gave me a whole range of figures on female mental health. You might even read ridiculous stats like:

25% of all suicides are women

(I’ve read this online, and it wasn’t meant to be a joke).

Suicide is the biggest single killer of men in both the UK and the United States.

You will likely either know someone who has killed themselves or has considered it yourself.

Here’s my story:

Alan lived just up the street from me and we’d see each other on the street or at church youth group. One winter’s night we went sledging and afterwards watched cartoons in my living room.

When Alan was nineteen he killed himself. Or at least I think he did. The tiny square in the local newspaper said there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’ about a teenage boy dying alone in his house.

Blink 182 were popular at the time. Adam’s Song will always remind me of him:

I never thought I’d die alone
Another six months I’ll be unknown
Give all my things to all my friends
You’ll never step foot in my room again

I didn’t go to his funeral. We weren’t that close.

No Suspicious Circumstances

Are you old enough to remember Bob Geldof snapping his fingers every time an Ethiopian child died?

These days, he’d be snapping his fingers a lot less thanks to improved medical facilities and child survival rates in sub-Sarahan Africa.

Instead we’re facing another epidemic. And it’s men killing themselves. In the United States, a man kills himself every 20 minutes.

That means that while I was writing this post, between nine and twelve men have died in the US alone.

Men are three times more likely to turn to substance abuse than women and significantly less likely to seek mental health treatment.

Lithuania – the small European country with the notorious award of having the highest suicide rate in the world.

The vast majority are male (83% in 2009).

We are the Answer

This is the point of the blog post at which I decry the lack of facilities or men’s support groups out there.

Except I’m not going to. Because if a more that cursory glance in the mainstream media will tell you anything, it’s this: No one cares about men except other men. 

So if we’re going to fix this (if it even can be fixed) then we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

We owe it to men like Alan who never stood a chance – like saplings in a raging torrent.

We’re going to stop being so insular and look for the guy on the fringes who is struggling.

We’re going to offer support to our fellow men who we know are struggling with substance or alcohol dependency.

We’re going to stop putting each other down and build each other up.

And we’re going to encourage men we know who are suffering to get help and treatment.

The kind of change that’s needed to save men’s lives isn’t one that can be brought about by governments or special interest groups. It can only come from the efforts of individuals.

Men like you and me.

Neil

P.S. I talk about issues of mental health and burnout in my book which you can buy here.