Mental health in Men.

Men’s mental health is an often undervalued topic when it comes to mental health. Millions of men suffer and die from mental illness each year. 78% of all suicide deaths are from men. 49% of men feel more depressed than they admit to people in their life. Many men often feel as though they are burdened to not talk about their feelings and hold them inside. That’s part of the reason why often when you see a man cry you ask him “why are you crying”. It’s because you’re not used to seeing a man cry. One of the things that causes a lot of mental illness for men specifically is the fact that they feel that they can’t talk to others about it. They have to hide it and not show their true emotion because society will portray it as “non-masculine”. Men’s suicide rates are 3.6% times higher than women and it’s because women have an easier time talking about their feelings than men. Society has so many standards and expectations for men to live up to. Men feel as though they can’t talk to anyone about their feelings so it becomes very hard for them to share sensitive stuff and get help. In my opinion, some steps that could be taken towards solving this issue are talking to men more about the issue and offering helpful issues for them to use. Talking to them is a big one, show I guy you know that you can talk to him and that you care about his mental health because it will mean a lot to them. Because guys don’t get lots of compliments or when someone notices something about them in general so it means a lot. Another idea could be improving one’s physical health, improving sleep and eating habits. Breaking out of bad habits can bring on depression-like smoking or drinking. Go out and talk to friends so you can be more social. Personally I feel like this is a very important issue that is not talked about enough because it’s literally killing men and the numbers and statistics are crazy. I chose to write about this topic because a few months ago I had my own personal dealings with mental health issues and wouldn’t want any other men to go through that. It’s very hard and it feels very lonely like you have no one to talk to about it because you feel like you can’t trust anyone. I feel like I wasn’t very effective in making a change in someone else but In myself alone yes because I was able to overcome my depression and sadness. How I feel about this project is neutral. Because on the one hand it’s cool to kinda pursue a topic that means something to you and learn more about it. In addition to that it’s also cool to see what my fellow classmates are working on and what topics/passions they’re interested in. Something I could have done better was doing my interviews and managing my time better when it came to doing the interview. I had intended to interview guys and ask them questions about mental health research and analyze the data. For me I think something that is still left is to maybe interview more guys. Something I am interested in seeing in one of my other classmates is Kyla and Tybria are making a mini course. I think it will be interesting to see how they pursue that and what kind of mark/legacy it will leave for them and the SLA community.