This month is Movember, a month-long campaign to raise awareness of men's health issues. With that in mind, we should take some time to discuss men’s health.
Part of Movember is about paying close attention to diseases and disorders that are unique to or prevalent in men – prostate and testicular cancers, for example, or heart disease, stroke or other (often preventable) conditions.
What I want to look at this week is men’s mental health. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m discounting womens’ health issues – I’m sure some female readers will be able to identify with this – but I’m just going off the existing theme.
Nearly three times as many men as women die by suicide in Manitoba. The rate is even higher in Saskatchewan. Across Canada, suicide rates for men start to increase around age 20, peak at the 40s and don’t fall off until around age 60.
What I want to do here is to share my own experiences with mental health as a man, in the hopes that it could help someone.
People who read these columns each week may recall earlier this year, I wrote about my father's struggle with dementia and how the disease affected both him and our family. What I didn’t mention is how his health slid so far, so fast.
Pop, like many men in general, had not been a big fan of going to the doctor. The idea, as best as I can tell, was to continue on as normal and, hey, maybe with some luck this issue will go away. I’m not hurting, there’s nothing wrong and I have to keep up a front for everybody because being injured or ill somehow means I’m weak.
I don't know why he thought he had to do that. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. What it ended up doing was push treatment for the early stages of his dementia away and make him deteriorate faster. By the time we actually did have Pop’s condition looked at by a doctor, there was little we could do to help him. Nature had run its course.
During that time, I felt I needed to be strong for my family and our extended group of friends, business connections, acquaintances, you name it. Nobody told me it was necessary. It just happened, gradually.
I don't know why I thought I had to be strong. I wanted to help. That was it. I knew other people were hurting and wanted to help them stop.
All my life, I've been told to not hide emotions. My generation seems to be one of the first that has been raised to be open about feelings.
I discovered the real reason why people - particularly men - don’t express their emotions. I wanted to sob like a child night and day. I still do sometimes. Men don't avoid crying or expressing emotion simply because they are afraid other men will judge them. It’s both an external and internal fear. It’s complicated.
I avoided it because I did not want to burden others with my emotions. I thought – and on some level, still think – that by being outwardly upset, I’d make people around me, people I cared deeply about, upset as well.
I started having anxiety attacks. I stopped sleeping regularly. I went days without eating, then followed those days up with days I ate like my life depended on it. I threw myself into my work – hours and hours on end, pulling all-nighters every week, because I had attached every bit of my own self-worth into my work. At times, I’m sure I was a pain in the ass to work with, to hang out with, to live with, all of it.
On the inside, I wasn’t in pain – at least, it didn’t feel that way. I felt cold, like someone had taken the light I had inside and flicked off the switch. Numb and dark.
I never wanted to kill myself, but man, there were days when I did not want to be alive. I wished I could have just hit a giant pause button on the world and sat back and caught up for a month or so. I wish you could pay off a sleep debt with one easy three week payment.
I know I'm not the only person who has mental health struggles. I have friends close to me who are going through this too, several of whom try to keep their cards close to their chests. I have not been as supportive as I could have been for them. We’ve all got our own problems to solve. Mine demanded so much attention for a time that I didn’t even start worrying about theirs.
You can’t solve something like this by yourself. I owe my friends, my family (and in particular, my mother) a huge debt for their support. I don’t know where I’d be right now without their love. I’m a better man because I sought out help and it was there. It’s there if you seek it.
There’s no sense being secretive about it. There are certain societal pressures men feel to be something they may not be. We all live with them. They are unrealistic and outdated standards, but damned if they don’t dictate so much of what we do, whether it’s in outlook on the world, how we interact with each other, hobbies, body image, everything.
In attempting to look strong, we fail to see how fragile we actually are.
That’s why I have one simple request of you, the reader. If you or someone you love is hurting, speak up and seek help. Seeking help does not make you less of a man. It does not make things worse. If something important was broken on your car, you would either fix it or take it to the shop. You are the same way.
We all have to stick together. If you've got my back, I’ve got yours.
Talk to somebody. See a doctor. If you can, go to therapy or counselling. I’ve done it and left feeling like a brand new man. Look after your health. Give someone you love a hug. Check in on your friends, even those who seem like they have it together.
We owe it to each other to help. We owe it to ourselves to be in good health.
