Men’s Mental Health: Suffering In Silence

Ben Curtis argues that men’s mental health month is passing us by unnoticed, and that it is high time to do November justice.

Image courtesy of Ben Curtis

By the time you finish reading this article, four men globally will have died by suicide.

There can be no doubt that Britain is in a mental health epidemic. Whilst this nationwide crisis has been exacerbated in lockstep with the recent national insecurity owed to the pandemic and cost of living crisis, what lurks beneath is a decades-old stigmatisation of male mental health. It is estimated that 77% of men suffer symptoms such as anxiety, stress, or depression, and November, men’s mental health awareness month, should be an opportunity to support them. Effecting this change requires cooperation between individuals and institutions, as both parties currently fall short in their discussion of male mental health. This month demands our attention; it ought to promote cooperative and constructive discourse and fight the supposition that feeling low is a failure of masculinity, and I don’t feel that we are doing November justice.

I can confidently say that amongst my closest friends, not one of us has been untroubled by our mental health; all of us have had feelings of anxiety or stress, and some have contemplated suicide. That we each know about our shared struggles is itself a rarity, because at least 40% of men have never spoken to anyone about their mental health; they have suffered in silence, because this is what men have been told to do for generations. I recall being in primary school when boys, no older than 11 years old, were told to “man up” should they begin crying or even allude to their feelings of sadness. Whilst discourse has improved since then, the echoes still linger within the consciousness of each boy across the country who has ingrained within him an acute sense that sadness is weakness. With this decades long invalidation of male emotion and male sadness, how can we be surprised to hear that half of men won’t speak out for fear of an “embarrassment” or a “negative stigma”? How on earth can we be shocked that 3 out of 4 suicides in the UK are male? There simply exists an unconscious dogma that invalidates any male emotion, leaving for many only one fatal option.

This manifests itself amongst the student population here at the University of Cambridge as well, difficulties with intense academic study being defined by the Office for Students as a key contributor to high student suicide rates. It is undoubted that being a male student at the University of Cambridge is a position that carries with it immense privilege, free from much of the prejudice to which other members of the student body are subject. That existing inequality is rightly identified and is routinely being challenged within the University is essential. In doing this, though, we must be careful not to make an assumption that there is an irrefutable contentment and relative ease within men that belies any implication that they struggle with their mental health. The simple fact is that they do, and November provides an opportunity to focus on where we need to improve discourse around men’s mental health. The mental health charity Mind have identified this need, arguing that men need to be “a target audience” in the nationwide fight for suicide prevention. Within university life, we can and must make space in which to address mental health amongst our male friends. 

However, whilst November should permit an opportunity to focalise and highlight the importance of constructive discourse surrounding men’s mental health, university-wide conversations about men’s mental health in the previous 2 weeks have been, to my knowledge, conspicuously absent, and that is something we must change. A glance at both the University’s and Student Union’s Instagram pages reveals nothing; the immense significance of November seemingly passing the University’s institutions by unnoticed. This is unacceptable: through their silence, institutions fail to challenge the existing culture in which these crucial conversations are deemed unwanted and so simply don’t happen. However, this shouldn’t preclude individuals from affecting change on a smaller but no less significant scale.

Men’s health charity Movember published a four-step approach to having meaningful discussions with the men in your life: ALEC. Asking, listening, encouraging action, and checking up will not fill the 1 in 10 vacancies for specialist mental health staff, and nor will it assure the safety of the 1.2 million people awaiting NHS mental health support, but it will make a positive impact in a man’s life. That the NHS is currently not fit to deal with the mental health crisis is emblematic of the urgency with which communities should work to destigmatise and improve the discourse surrounding mental health, because if not us, then who? Without both pressuring leading institutions to honour November’s significance and making a concerted effort to start personal conversations about male mental health, we’re doomed to remain trapped in a fatally persistent cycle. November should be used to elevate this often-abandoned topic; whilst our institutions remain inert, we as individuals have the tools at our disposal to make a difference and effect the change that is so desperately needed.

Although this has been the convention for decades, things can be different. Pick up on small behavioural deviations that indicate all things may not be well. If the once zealous lecture-goer stops attending his 9ams, and if the man once always up for socialising quietly recluses himself, then ask. Of course, behavioural cues alone should not instigate these conversations, even if nothing seems changed it harms no one to ask; after all, many men have learned to be excellent actors. The singular act of asking removes any stigma and creates the space and validation needed to proliferate widespread societal discourse surrounding male mental health.

Student groups have a long and storied activistic history; it is our duty to bring previously ignored issues to light, our mission to elevate underrepresented or underpublicized topics. This should embolden us to take action on men’s mental health: we need to act with urgency and energy to eradicate the stigma, inaction, and ignorance which has marked the treatment of men’s mental health for decades. So, check up on your friends, be alert to slight shifts in their behaviour and listen, because a small acknowledgement from you could make their day abundantly better. It is only through the propagation of intimate and sincere conversations that we can hope that our institutions might start to respond to the desperate needs of those they are meant to serve. 

For more information:

Movember: https://uk.movember.com

Campaign Against Living Miserably: https://www.thecalmzone.net

Mind UK: https://www.mind.org.uk