It’s Movember again. The one month a year that we all (or at least most of us) focus on men’s health and how important it is to ‘get checked.’ Movember originally became a Thing in the effort to promote prostate cancer awareness, and how, just like breast cancer in women, this cancer is most easily and successfully treated when caught in the early stages. Since then, Movember has morphed into a more general emphasis on all facets of men’s health. This is a good thing because quite frankly, men are the worst at doing the regular ‘maintenance’ needed for upkeep. I know men who faithfully change the oil in their car (or have it changed) following a rigorous schedule designed to keep the car in optimum condition. They themselves, however, haven’t been to a doctor for a checkup in forever.
Guess what happens when we switch to mental health? The stats are abysmal. Men don’t go to counselling. The World Health Organization (WHO) created a special mental health task force, the “Gap Action Program” (mhGAP) in 2017, based on its Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020. It was evident that mental health is a huge factor in quality of life, and it wasn’t being identified or addressed.
Poor mental health is also associated with rapid social change, stressful work conditions, gender discrimination, social exclusion, unhealthy lifestyle, physical ill-health and human rights violations.
That sounds a lot like life. ‘Rapid social change’ and ‘stressful work conditions’ are something most of us deal with every day. In the last two decades, the number of individuals experiencing burnout, anxiety, depression, or stress-related illnesses has increased exponentially, and we know from research it’s not just because we’re paying more attention now. Just think of the speed with which our lives have changed because of worldwide access to the Internets. The nature of work has changed, bad economics has created the working poor, social unrest is happening all over the world, climate change is accelerating, modernization, polarization, more natural disasters, multiple manmade disasters, and the abuse of power creating legions of victims, keep us on edge and stressed out. That’s all on a macro level. If we scale it back to the micro level, as individuals we deal daily with a bombardment of mental noise that makes it difficult to hear ourselves think. Sometimes, the degree of internal noise we live with is crazy making.
Here are some key facts from WHO’s Special Task Force on Mental Health:
Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Mental health is an integral part of health; indeed, there is no health without mental health. Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.
‘How does this fold into Movember?’ you ask. In our beautiful and often cruel world, we human beings are subject to mental health issues. In fact, at some point, the statistics say we are likely to experience mental illness. We also know from research data that you know someone who is struggling with mental health. What the data also tells us is that men are the largest demographic for poor physical and mental health. There are a variety of reasons for this, and the they are, for the most part, preventable.
Men are statistically ‘first’ in a lot of sucky categories; most likely to die as an adolescent, most likely to die a violent death, most likely to die of a treatable condition, most likely to be homeless, most likely to go to war, most likely to die on the job, most likely to be alone in old age, most likely to complete suicide… this is not a nice list, gentlemen.
Why not make yourself an outlier? Get off that bell curve. Go to the doctor regularly for that physical. Practice good lifestyle habits. Manage your stress by maintaining a reasonable work/leisure/play balance. Take care of your mental health by seeing a therapist once a year for a checkup for your psyche. Kiss dogs and play with babies…Oh…wait. Kiss babies and play with dogs. Take time with your families. Enjoy life in the ways that rejuvenate your inner landscape.
Don’t become a statistical footnote in the WHO report – take responsibility for your health. All of it; and live a long and satisfying life. It’s entirely possible that Julius Caesar might have lived longer if he’d heeded the warning. You might, too.
Susannah-Joy is a psychotherapist and complex trauma specialist based in Canada. Find her on Twitter @aboutthattrauma, Instagram @SuJo1963 and Facebook @william.associates. Photo by Alan Hardman on Unsplash.
