This International Men’s Day, help the men in your life open up.
Help yourself open up. These are trying times not just for one but the collective. And more so for men as their identities come saturated with much emphasized neglect, especially towards their mental health.
For ages, men have been associated with being the superior one: the one to earn, provide for, and protect. This has granted our dear gentlemen with no real support and nurturing, especially by their partners. Add to that a constantly anxious society that demands performance, financial security and societal stimulation. And that, not just for the man himself but all those dependent on him, thus making the weight they are shouldering become ten-folds. And we don’t talk about things like that.
We live and love by this ‘don’t talk, don’t feel’ rule in our society, more so towards men. How can it then be a surprise that 70% of the suicide cases for the past many years have been of men?
“More men than women are committing suicides in many countries,” reported The Wire.
Rory O’ Connor of the University of Glasgow believes that the one factor that contributes the most to the gender bias with which we deal with men’s health, emotional, physical or mental is social perfectionism. Men feel that they’ve to provide or else they’ve failed. This is a factor that is as common in developing countries as it is in the developing ones.
Could this constant pressure and more subjective ones be the reason why men also have more heart diseases?
The debate may go on, but what is the most crucial is to identify the need in the men in our lives to be supported and most importantly, heard. We can start with something as simple as paying attention to their body language, dropping a few kind words in their days, or just listen.
Our International Men’s Day campaign stands by gentlemen as manifestations of many virtues and realties, innate and surface, and we believe in talking about them. We believe in lending an ear to all that is unsettled and that is what we ask of you. In these times of need, be gentle to the gentlemen in your lives. Avoid judgments and perhaps just listen.
Our men near and far could truly use that.
