Have We Really Removed The Stigma Around Men’s Mental Health

Cara-Louise Scott

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This month marks Men’s Health Awareness Month, which is a month dedicated to spreading awareness on the mental health issues men face. In the past, mental health for men has been a taboo topic – something many men have struggled with opening up about due to the toxic masculinity that society has historically forced upon men, and still finds itself in the cracks of society today.

Men get told to “man up” on a daily basis – they are told to be strong, to not cry, to get on with things. And when have these comments ever came to any good? The damage is clear – by telling men they need to act in this way, it makes their problems become a fizzed-up unopened bottle inside of them. Until they reach breaking point.

The statistics on men’s mental health

Not only does the most recent suicide data from Samarians show that 307 more people died from suicide in 2021 than in 2020, but this data also showed that the male suicide rate was 15.8% per 100,000 compared to a female suicide rate of 5.5. per 1000,000. What’s scarier is that recent data also shows that the number of men who have suicidal thoughts when feeling worried or low has doubled to 10% since 2009. 

“two in five men admit to regularly feeling worried or low”

Recent statistics on men’s mental health show that two in five men admit to regularly feeling worried or low, an increase from 37% in 2009, and men are still more likely than women to drive alone, go to the pub with friends, or take recreational drugs to relax them when they get these feelings. 

Charity support

Too many men in my life have suffered from mental health. I have had to watch my loved ones break down time and time again and whilst I am there to support them, they sometimes don’t want to open up to me or to those around them because of the stigma that tells them that they should just bear it.

However, there has been some progress over the past few years with more men opening up about their mental health. Charities such as MIND and CALM are always advocating for men to open up about their mental health and they are great charities to resort to for help.

“men should not suffer in silence”

MANUP? is a specific men’s mental health charity that challenges the term ‘man up’ and seeks to remove the stigma of men and mental health; they have events and use social media to ‘show male characters overcoming mental health problems, rather than suffering from them.’ They work with businesses, schools, the NHS, and other charities to widen the reach of their important message: men should not suffer in silence.

My research

I conducted a poll on Twitter to find out if men felt like there had been progress with support offered to them. I found that 1/3 of men feel like there has been significant progress, another 1/3 say that there has been some improvement, but the final 1/3 feel that there hasn’t been progress and that needs to be better.

When asking men on Twitter if they felt comfortable talking about their mental health, 40% said they do talk to some people, but 40% said they do not talk to others about their mental health at all, and 20% said they don’t, but they’d like to be able to open up.

My fiancé has struggled on and off with mental health, often with his head becoming dark for reasons he is unable to express. He has struggled with looks and body confidence, but doesn’t feel like he can talk to his family about his feelings because he doesn’t feel like they’d accept it or want to hear it. He thinks it would hurt them.

Luckily, he is able to talk to his friends, who also struggle, and to me more so than he can with his family. I asked him if his friends openly discuss mental health. He said that most of his friends won’t apart from his closest friend, and he believes that their reluctance to speak out is due to feelings of embarrassment. Young men tend to think that they should be a stereotypical man and don’t want to come across as weak. My fiancé argues that many men believe it will affect their masculinity by opening up about their mental health.

He agrees that celebrities are talking more openly about their mental health struggles and this provides role models for men to speak up, but he still thinks a lot of improvement is needed: “People need to accept that men do go through a lot of mental health issues and sometimes more than woman. It is a very serious thing and there needs to be more equality.” 

“I wouldn’t say a word to my mates during school if I was struggling because I know I’d be picked on”

He told me that: “When I was in school and someone would talk about mental health, they were bullied and made fun of for weeks. I think this stuck with many of us and made it seem like it wasn’t the norm to talk about mental health. I wouldn’t say a word to my mates during school if I was struggling because I know I’d be picked on.”

Jack’s mental health story

I also spoke to a student journalist from Twitter, Jack, who told me he has experienced depression three times even though he’s never been officially diagnosed. 

“The main difference with being a man is the loneliness,” Jack states, “you feel so alone in the situation, you can’t talk to anyone about it. You can feel trapped with no one to go to when you don’t feel comfortable going to family about it.”

“unfortunately a lot of men don’t get through it”

“It can make you stronger going through it [mental health problems] but unfortunately a lot of men don’t get through it and that’s where we see the suicide rates are so much higher for men than women.”

Like my partner and many other men, Jack also struggles to speak to his family: “You feel like you’ve let them down or you’re too weak to be part of the family … they’re not the first people you go to; my last resort is to go to my mum whose reaction is always better than you think. She was very supportive.”

Jack also notes how a lot of his friends go through mental health issues but don’t want to talk about it because it feels like such a big step to be able to open up, simply stating: “you try and keep it to yourself.”

“It feeds more into loneliness and feeling isolated”

“Mental health is something that we all know is there but we don’t acknowledge it. I don’t think it’s a taboo, but it is ignored – especially in male friends’ groups – they don’t talk about it. We know its going on and we know what they are going through but we just give them time to work through it by themselves which makes sense but isn’t right. It feeds more into loneliness and feeling isolated.”

Jack explains how there is a lack of understanding on knowing how to go about men’s mental health. There have been big improvements, in his eyes, such as celebrities speaking up about it and more charities and online organisations supporting men’s mental health but he argues that this mainly creates awareness more than normalising speaking out about it.

“We need to make it clear that men can feel down too and that it doesn’t make them weak to talk about it. We need to open up the conversation. Media plays a part in this but I think teaching in schools could be better. If we teach young boys growing up that this is the situation that can occur and this is how you can go about it, it’ll become more normal for men to open up.”

How much progress have we truly made in men’s mental health?

“the way we bring up boys needs to be addressed”

It’s clear to see that there has been some progress and the conversation around men’s mental health is opening up, but ultimately, male suicide rates are still much higher and more needs to be done to enable men to be more comfortable opening up about their feelings. Education in school around mental health needs to improve and the way we bring up boys needs to be addressed.

Opening up about mental health does not make you weak, it makes you strong. 

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Featured image courtesy of Island Works on Pixabay. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.