560,000 MEN COMMIT SUICIDE EVERY YEAR.
THAT’S 47,000 MEN A MONTH, 1,200 MEN A DAY, OR 1 MAN EVERY MINUTE.
It’s also a statistic that you’ve probably heard before.
Statistics like these are the very reason why men’s mental health awareness has improved so much in the past few years, but these very same statistics are also what’s causing many men to still feel unable to talk to the people around them and fully accept their emotions, despite all the progress in men’s mental health over the years. Why?
Awareness ≠ Action.
Discussion around men’s mental health is currently the best it’s ever been-
and it’s thanks to organizations, people, and schools spreading awareness about masculinity and how it can affect men’s mental health. It’s starting to get treated as the serious issue it is, and mental health is a topic present in discussion in schools, in workplaces, and online across the world. All the same, however, it’s not being done correctly.
However, Awareness doesn’t suffice.
Mental health is currently being treated as an item on a long to-do list: something to do, talk about, tick off the list, and forget about. After all, that is indeed what spreading awareness about men’s mental health issues was meant to do: to encourage people to spread the word, to even more people. While this is a huge improvement over no relevant discussion at all, this system means that almost everyone’s trying to spread awareness about it - but almost nobody is actually taking action. This is the problem we’re trying to solve.
WE ARE WORKING
ON CHANGING THAT.
Mental health is a much more complex issue than we like to portray it as. To solve it, we need to go beyond the current notions of awareness into making an effort- a real effort- at a cultural shift; into one in which mental health is not merely a buzzword or a checkbox but a place for us to share our experiences, not just without judgment, but also with pride of expression. Strength in community. Something like that.