Blog Post Five

Mental Health Resources Available To Men

This week, I decided to look into the resources available to men regarding their mental health as well as other facts/ statistics on men with mental illnesses.

When I searched Resources for men’s mental health the website for the NIMH which is the National Institute of Mental Health was the first one to pop up. This site has many different tabs and headers for different types of mental health issues/ disorders such as: Anxiety Disorders, Depression, PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and many more. The site also has a few links to different pages designated to a group of people. Such as Men, women, older adults, children and adolescents.

When I clicked the link for this site on the google search engine, it took me directly to the men’s area of the site. It starts off with a brief introduction into this section of the site, claiming that although both men and women suffer from the same types of behavioral disorders, they have a difficult time expressing their struggles and reaching out for help . This is a direct result of what our society dictates a man should act. Men have to be strong and resilient and a provider. It is a whole lot of pressure that our society is placing on men and they feel it. Men who are struggling with things such as depression have a harder time swallowing their pride and looking for a professionals help.

The page that I was observing also lists warning signs for mental illness in me, which i found to be interesting. The site said that although men experience the same types of hurdles, they express the symptoms differently. Where a women struggling with depression might show it by expressing sadness and disinterest, a man will show signs of aggression and anger. Men are also quick to turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the symptoms of mental illness, before even considering reaching out to someone.

Men will also share the other symptoms that women face such as irritability, lack of sleep or too much sleep, lose or gain in appetite.

The Site talks about a campaign that ran through 2003 to 2005 called Real Men, Real Depression which sought to bring awareness to men’s mental health .

” As part of the campaign, documentary filmmaker Leslie Wiener captured men speaking candidly about their experiences with depression. Personal accounts from a wide spectrum of men—a retired U.S. Air Force First Sergeant, a firefighter, a writer, a publisher, a national diving champion, a lawyer, a police officer, a student, and others—became the Real Stories of Depression video series. “

After watching the videos provided o the site, it gave me a better idea of what I wanted to do with my project. I want to be able to incorporate real life stories to my cause because I feel that it brings the biggest impact. If people can hear stories from the source itself then maybe it can motivate people into action.

Although I feel like their efforts with the videos had good intentions, I feel that the clips were too short with too little details of what facing something as overpowering as depression is really like. I think that if we can bring light to a really dark subject people will begin to understand why men’s mental health is an important topic worthy of advocacy.

I want to maybe do something similar for my final project except maybe in the form of a podcast where I can still ask people who struggle with mental health questions without the pressure of having to appear on film. I want to tie in statistics and provide resources while depicting the harsh realities of mental disorders.