November’s Importance for Men’s Mental Health

November is here. All the “back to school” gear you bought for your children is ripped, broken and just in time for you to replace it, you now have Christmas lists and non-stop Mariah Carey to contend with.

Those of you who wander into the town or city centre to do your Christmas shopping could be forgiven for thinking you’ve stumbled into your local rugby club. The grooming choices of many men you will encounter range from teenager without a razor all the way to Magnum P.I.

While many of us would concede the moustache is not for everyone, or even most, there is sound reasoning many of the blokes will look like they idolise Hulk Hogan et al – it’s November, one of the most important times of the year for men’s mental health awareness.

November is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. You might be rolling your eyes understandably thinking there’s a day and month for everything these days. While that may be true, very few of them are genuinely important – with all due respect to National Lost Sock Memorial Day.

This one however, is different. There has been widespread research on the declination of men’s mental health for the last decade from a variety of academic and surveyed experiments. This month is all about raising awareness of the sensitive issue to show that many men need not adhere to age-old stereotypes of strong and silent masculinity and to show that thousands of males are experiencing similar symptoms.

Movember is the perfect encapsulation of this. Movember is an annual event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of health issues specific to men, such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and male suicide. In 2003, Travis Garone and Luke Slattery met for a pint in Melbourne when they touched on the topic of the disappearing moustache. They questioned if they could get 30 members, known as “Mo Bros” to bring the tache back. Fast-forward a year and they had 480 Australians taking part, raising over £20,000 for a prostate cancer foundation and funding over 6 male mental health projects. A website was built, and the idea had taken off.

20 years later, nations spanning 4 continents are actively taking part, over 6.5 million Mo Bros (and Sisters) are listed, more than 1250 men’s mental health projects have been funded and PSMA-targeting therapy, supported by Movember-funded research, was made available in the US for the treatment of men with progressive, advanced prostate cancer. What started as a talking point over a few jars has grown into an international phenomenon that has greatly impacted mental health awareness and cancer detection among men. Our very own FPH Director fortunately discovered an unwanted male-specific diagnosis recently and the earlier they are spotted, the better the odds.

Movements like these have never been more crucial. Prominent charity Mates In Mind published recent data in their advertisement for Men’s Health Awareness Month 2024. According to the charity, four in five suicides are by men, with suicide the biggest cause of death for men under 35. Furthermore, in 2017, 12.5% of men in the UK were experiencing some form of common mental health condition. Moreover, nearly three-quarters of adults who go missing are men and they are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol and three times as likely to report frequent drug use. These points have consistently been alluded to in previous blogs, however the figures clearly paint a dire picture for blokes.

This is why the month of November is so crucial to destigmatising outdated norms and raising awareness of the issue. The levels of health among males have nose-dived, ONS statistics indicate suicide rate for males in England and Wales increased to 17.4 deaths per 100,000 in 2023, the highest since the turn of the millennium. Rampant levels of homelessness and rough sleeping throughout the UK are thought to be significant contributory factors, however the reasoning for suffering will always have an individual element.  

Numerous data streams are available, but they all deliver a similar conclusion - men’s mental health and suicide rates have reached the point of crisis. Acknowledging the problem is a step one and to their credit, the UK government did so, launching a revised National Suicide Prevention Strategy in September 2024, aiming to reduce the rate.

We have highlighted November as it offers a great opportunity to point to the issues while they are on the media agenda. The ultimate goal is to make sure that every 30 days are treated like Mental Health Awareness Month in order to improve cancer detection, mental health and reduce suicide rates for all the blokes out there.