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 we have observed in our community that 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, we do not believe that it’s being done as well as it could be.
However, Awareness doesn’t suffice.
Mental health in many places is still 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 even as more people get involved, their impact is still not as high as it could be.
WE ARE WORKING
ON CHANGING THAT.
Our mission is to make a tangible impact on the mental health of our community members by becoming a catalyst for both personal expression and creative collaboration. The secret is not in the art we create — though the art we make is, in fact, very sick as well — but in the openly vulnerable, welcoming, and prolifically vibrant circle of creatives that we foster in this pursuit of great art. Since its founding, Men That Cry has evolved into a wide-reaching support network that many of our artists now regard as a home.
Mental health is a very complex issue: even more than we portray it as. To tackle it, we feel the 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. Action through art. Something like that.