Religion is a Mental Illness

Q: What are the significant contributing factors to why suicide is such a prevalent problem for men?

A: Research is showing us that men who are suicidal don’t consider themselves having a "mental health problem." They have a problem that's out there, external. It will be things like debt, or joblessness, or experiences of abuse, experiences of childhood trauma, or bullying in school.

One in five suicides in the UK, of men, is linked to relationship breakdown, and child custody battles. A huge cohort of men fighting a losing battle against a sexist family court system, and a lot of them turn to suicide. They're not "mentally unwell." They've just lost their child. And in fact, they're responding in a way that actually makes a lot of sense. So, I’d say in general, we need to stop seeing suicide as an irrational decision, based on some sort of mental health problem, and start to understand suicide as a rational solution-based outcome, for many men, who are trying to solve a problem of which they can’t control, and they've got no choices left.

Susie and I described male suicide a bit like, a pot of water on a stove, and it's bubbling up, and it's about to pop off. That man talking is equivalent to taking the lid off that saucepan. You're taking the lid off, you're allowing it to breathe. You're allowing it to settle down. And talking, taking that lid off off, does help. It helps deal with the problem itself, but I don’t know if it solves the problem. We need to work out what is that, the thing that's creating that heat? Is it a man in debt? Is it a man losing his job? Is it a man losing his child? Is it some sort of relationship breakdown?

11% of men who are being abused, will attempt suicide. That is a massive problem. If one of those men goes to a talk group, and tells the people there, "I’m being abused... there’s nowhere for me to go. There are no shelters. I call up the abuse helpline... they think I'ma predator." If that charity listening to that man, doesn’t then go onto advocate for greater support for male victims of abuse; more shelters, more funding, a fundamental change in the way in which police handle abuse. Then that charity is not doing enough, in my opinion. Charities need to "talk" themselves, they're the ones that need to "talk," and actually do something about the problems that men are telling them about.

The vast majority of men who die by suicide do actually talk, and have actually sought help, but the help they got was not adequate, and it failed them, and they still died by suicide. So this meme of "men can talk," as some sort of silver bullet to suicide. It's just not good enough.

It highlights a very important generalised difference in how we look at women's and men’s issues. For women’s, for example, we say, "the problem is out there in society... we need to change society." For men’s issues, we only ever say, "he needs to change himself."

As well, we need to let men speak about what they want to speak about. So often men do talk, and we don't like what they've got to say, and we tell them to "shut up." So then we've got these two co-existing strands, one side is telling men "to talk," and the other is telling men to "shut up." And overall, we can all do better. And we have to do better.

And recognise male suicide is a massive, societal, epidemic problem, that we all need to help solve, and not just throw it at the feet of men. And until we start seeing men in the same way as women, the victim of issues that they are not fully in control of, then I don’t know what we can really do for male suicide.

It’s men’s mental health month, and as much as it’s important to raise awareness around #mentalhealth, and the importance of discussing it without stigma, it is also a time to speak about what mental health is not.

And no…’mental health’ is not the best lens through which to view and understand the epidemic of male suicide, which remains the leading cause of death in men below the age of 50.

No doubt in the week before this, and in the weeks to come, #mensmentalhealthmonth will be marked with many well-meaning calls, and kind words, to reduce male suicide.

Many will share numbers to call, a plea to ‘talk’, or offer a listening ear; but what few will speak of, is how most suicidal men don’t even conceptualise the problem they have as a ‘mental heath problem’, at all.

In fact, most of these men are of sound mind, viewing suicide as a rational and solution-based outcome, to ‘solve’ a problem they can no longer bear.

These men will point to debt, or joblessness, some kind of relationship breakdown, experiences of bullying, or abuse, sexual trauma, physical disability, loneliness, child custody breakdown…

And when it comes to such issues, each of which can lead directly to suicide, it is not men who refuse to talk, but society.

We refuse to talk about such issues men face, or even deny their existence entirely.

It’s a strange time to be an advocate fighting male suicide, because so many people claim to care, but when it comes to having the difficult, ugly discussions around the very things that cause male suicide, the room suddenly empties and the kindness evaporates.

The simple fact is, that male suicide has been in the limelight for years now; the campaigns have run, the money has been spent, and the problem is no better.

Something is not working.

Yes.

We are right to ask for “talk”, but not just words from the men needing our help, but “talk” from everybody else too.

So why are men doing this?

Are suicide interventions working?

And have we gotten our view of men’s issues, and male suicide, all wrong?

I mean, I have to say that until I started doing this work, I just wasn't dialed into the level of hostility that exists. It's so woven into our fabric and normalised.

I was in a major museum in London the other day, and in their greeting card section, they had a card that says, "I like everyone," and then underneath it in brackets, "even men." And that's like a mainstream London museum. And I thought if I went in there and I saw a card that said, "I like everyone", and then in brackets, "even lesbians", you're just never going to be, you're never going to be allowed to sell that kind of card, in that environment. But we can make those kind of jokes about men.

And it's really interesting to me, I am a gay woman, and I often when people are speaking about men in certain situations, or I am reading posts online, I think if I took out "men" from what's being said, and put in "lesbians", what would I be feeling?

Would that be acceptable? Yeah.

Would I feel safe now if in one hand you were telling me something kind of dismissive and stigmatising and shaming about myself, and then also telling me that I need to speak the things that I'm most vulnerable about, having been probably potentially kept those things to myself all my life.

So, the idea, I think when you've kept things so suppressed, the idea then of being vulnerable about it, about speaking it aloud, is so disorientating.

So of course you're just going to send me further away from feeling the psychological safety that I can actually articulate my pain and have it heard with compassion.

So, I think for me, like one of the most fundamental critical aspects of this, that I think it's incumbent on every single person to sit with, because I know how transformative it has been for myself, sitting with it, so the psychologist I mentioned earlier, Martin Seager and a colleague, John Barry, have come up with these ideas about how our empathy is socialised. So how in our societies, our empathy is socialised to see men as causing harm, more readily than we are to see men as being harmed. So, we're more easy to see men as privileged than to see men as being victims of things.

And when that happens, the landscape is no longer like this in terms of our compassion, it's like this. And that is so dangerous then. That's such a fundamental thing that I think every single human being can start engaging with the work of thinking: how is my empathy being socialised? How am I responding when I'm hearing things about men? How might I be listening to the men in my life differently than I might be listening to the women? And start to reflect on our own kind of behaviors around that.

Politicians are asking suicidal men to talk, advocates urging them to cry, psychologists telling them to be less toxic.

Never in my life have I seen an issue so roundly blamed on those experiencing it.

Men.

This is your mess and therefore yours to solve.

Cry. Talk. Toxic.

That is your tool set, now get to work.

We don’t tell anyone else to go cry about their problems. We don’t label anyone else ‘toxic’.

Such an idea would be unthinkable if applied to other groups; and yet here we are, treating suicide, which remains the biggest threat to a young man’s life, with this exact approach.

And then we scratch our heads as to why the problem isn’t getting any better.

“Keep talking! Can you get both eyes welling up? Are you sure the toxicity is all gone?”

I am certain we will look back at these dark days, with hands over our face, and through parted fingers.

I am sure we’ll be embarrassed by the language we used, and how we failed to address an epidemic that claims thousands of British men’s lives and devastates countless others each year.

You know that photo of that god awful hairstyle you had twenty years ago, or those tragic flared jeans you once wore?

Yeah. Well, that’s how we’ll feel about our similarly tragic political opinions of today.

“How did we get it so wrong?” We’ll ask.

I think I have a better approach to reducing male suicide.

Instead of placing the primary responsibility for the problem on men’s shoulders, can we not apportion part of finding the solution to each of us?

For men are our friends, family and colleagues, this is an issue that hurts all of us, and it is all our problem to solve.

So don’t tell men to talk, cry, or be less toxic.

Ask yourself, your friends, family and society – to listen, ask and act.

How can we all do better?