Mental Health For Men

There are a lot of memes and ‘copy and paste’ posts basically saying that men suffering from mental health need to talk about their problems and be able to communicate and seek help.

I don’t think these help because they’re asking men to do something that feels too unnatural.

Men are built physically, mentally and emotionally in a different way to women. Men are traditionally the protectors, hunters, and warriors and they would demonstrate their prowess in these areas to impress females like much of the animal world, it’s written into their DNA to not ‘break down’ emotionally and most would rather die than do so.

For thousands of years we have asked men to do things that require emotional dissonance and still make films and entertainment that admire this as a quality.

It’s said that male suicide rates are far too high and rising but I don’t think this is the half of it. ‘Passive suicide’ is rife amongst men who stop taking life saving medication and who don’t seek medical help for conditions that become terminal.

Society needs to not try to make men and women ‘the same’ as that won’t work, we need to teach the skills required for self analysis and encourage emotional intelligence to enable men to understand the emotions that they have locked away so securely that they would rather die than open that door.

It’s important to not emasculate them but to teach them to not put their emotions in a place that enables them to fester and to be able to understand their feelings and resultant thoughts and cope with them intelligently – and that will actually make them stronger and a good example of modern masculinity.