Why We Need To Talk About Suicide
Hello, how are you doing? Are you having a good day? If not, that’s OK. My name is Paul, one of the things I do is: help men who are battling depression, stress and anxiety. I reboot your brain, get you back in the game, and to do that I use hypnosis, happiness and hi-jinks.
This is the first of four blogs about stuff that, as men, we find hard to talk about. Let’s start with some statistics. 84 men a week in the UK commit suicide, that’s 12 a day. 12 men a day means somebody right now, somewhere in the UK, is about to end it all. Suicide is the biggest single killer, more than all the diseases and other things that kill men under fifty years old in the UK.
That is a really horrible statistic – there’s no way round it. It’s invisible as well, because people don’t talk about it; it’s just not something we discuss.
But in a more general way, there are signs that mental health is starting to come to the forefront of things. Some famous names have recently admitted that they’ve had a problem, that they’ve had an issue, and that they’re dealing with it.
And the sky hasn’t fallen in.
Slowly things have started to shift, just a bit. But we need to keep getting this message out that it’s okay, particularly for men, to talk about this stuff. It’s not a stigma, it’s not a sign of weakness, it’s none of those things.
We have to stop this macho
idea that ‘big boys don’t cry’ and it’s a sign of weakness to talk about your emotions, your worries and all that other stuff. We, and I mean us as a nation, have to stop stigmatising it, start opening up and talking about it.
It’s absolutely brilliant
that some celebrities and sports stars have started opening up because if they do, if you get a famous footballer who says yeah, I suffer with it really badly and I stopped playing football for whatever period of time, it’s a start and a step in the right direction. The more we talk about it the more it becomes like having a broken leg. Nobody criticises anybody or thinks it’s a sign of weakness that they’ve got a broken leg, do they?
After so many years of men not talking, it’s a huge challenge. In the next blog, I’ll show you why it’s so close to me personally and how much damage not talking about this stuff can do.
Part One: https://www.ahappyhead.co.uk/why-we-need-to-talk-about-your-mental-health/
Part Two : https://www.ahappyhead.co.uk/stress-anxiety-depression-arent-great-destinations-ive-been-there/
Part Three : https://www.ahappyhead.co.uk/depression-what-are-the-signs/
Part Four: https://www.ahappyhead.co.uk/getting-the-word-out-on-mental-health/