"Break the Stigma & Let's Tackle the Mental Health Pandemic Together!"

Our mental health is in global free fall and perhaps that’s not surprising given the world we inhabit today – One of constant motion and commotion.

Every second 7130 tweets are being sent – People check their phones on average 224 times a day – And they touch them even more – 2617 times every 24 hours.

We spend on average over 9 hours every day on some form of screen, be that phone, tablet, laptop, computer, that is more time than the average person spends asleep each night.

We are uploading 80M photos to Instagram and 4M blogs to the internet every day.

We spend an average of 1 hour a day updating our status on Facebook, if we are on Facebook – In the US 30% of adults get all their news only from Facebook – Which perhaps coincidentally is roughly the same percentage of Americans experiencing a mental health problem.

Meanwhile over 2 Billion people are watching over 600 Billion hours of video clips on YouTube every month – spending an average 40 minutes every visit and 70% of the stuff they will be looking at will not be related to their original search – Whilst 300 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Exhausted?

No one could blame you if you wanted to have a wee lie down, yet 1-in-5 of us routinely report feeling unusually tired and one recent large-scale survey of 38,700 British employees found that only 15% of respondents felt reinvigorated by their previous night’s sleep.

But it’s relentless and just goes on and on!

Did you know that in the US half of millennial's and 75% of Gen Z have left a job due to mental health reasons.

This is according to a recent study conducted by Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics published in the Harvard Business Review.

And whilst mental health is fast becoming the next frontier of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and for all the right reasons, the inescapable truth is its touch can be felt everywhere.

With the young experiencing poor mental health perhaps most keenly, and younger men in particular experiencing suicide rates that are nearly 4 times higher than those for females of a similar age.

In the UK a man will take his life every 2 hours, or put another way in 1154 days, 13908 men will have died by their own hand!

In fact, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 and 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease and whilst the level of male suicides remains constant, in recent years the number of female suicides has halved.

This is a male problem and men are also twice as likely to become alcoholics than women.

A 10 Year Study

A 10 Year study has found that regular arguments between spouses, their children, the extended family and even the neighbours, can more than double the risk of an early death for men. Often because increased stress levels lead to the misuse of alcohol, among other things.

But suicide is a wholly preventable death!

Nurture or Nature?

One-in-5 of us suffer from suicidal thoughts according to an NHS digital survey, but why do far greater numbers of men choose to act on these?

The world can be a dark place and there’s an awful lot of pressure on both sexes, with the toxic effects of Instagram and other social media platforms to have the perfect body, the perfect family, the perfect life.

Maybe it’s biologically determined that men take their own lives?

I don’t believe that to be the case for one second – In fact I believe that it’s more likely to be cultural, and a cultural-ism that pertains not only to the UK, but is in fact also pandemic, prevailing across all four corners of the globe. East & West, North & South!

In Japan, 79% of males surveyed by the authors of the New York Times best seller, ‘The Athena Doctrine’, admitted to being more than a tad dissatisfied with the conduct of men in their society.

Whilst data collected from a further 13 countries led the authors — John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio — to declare, “Feminine values are the operating system of the 21st century”

A Global Pandemic

Depression currently affects over 120 million people worldwide and the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2030 mental illness will be a major contributor to the burden of disease worldwide.

It’s a global pandemic! Fact!!

But also the fact remains that it is the female rather than the male who is more likely to suffer from depression.

A woman though will more likely seek help when she encounters trouble. She won’t tend to suffer in silence or bottle it up!

An Uncomfortable Truth

And maybe that’s the uncomfortable truth every man needs to face, as reported cases of eating disorders and self-harming are also on the increase, again particularly among younger men.

Stereotypical masculine behaviour — keeping a stiff upper lip, treating it all as a bit of joke — just doesn’t cut it in today’s world.

We’ve got to break the stigma that prevents men talking about stuff!

Because part of the recipe for a long and fruitful life is certainly not to Man-up and just get on with it — But men and women think and communicate differently.

For instance, men talk to determine and achieve status — Women talk to determine and achieve connection.

For men, life is like a ladder and the better spots are higher up — For women, life is a network and the better spots have greater connection.

But a very real difference is of course that men are very good at not talking about stuff and suffering in silence — particularly if its personal, embarrassing or concerns the medical i.e. both personal and embarrassing, and it’s about the body in some way as well.

A Better World

The full title of Gerzema and D’Antonio’s book is, ‘The Athena Doctrine: How Women (And The Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule The Future!’

And based on their research for the book, that included a survey of over 60,000 people world-wide, the authors found that ‘softer skills’ and those characteristics regarded as being more feminine — collaborating, listening, being caring, willing to share, being compassionate, kind, more open and authentic — were regarded as absolutely vital to surviving and thriving in our modern world of motion and commotion!

Indeed, they concluded that the world would be a better place if, “Men thought more like women”!

Bringing It Back Home

I was talking with a Doctor friend and some other medical professionals recently who shared how they’d been using Mindfulness to great effect in helping young men to deal with the psychological effects of erectile dysfunction.

Effects that if not addressed can have a profoundly dark impact on self-esteem, mental health and Well being and allow dark and dangerous thoughts to take hold.

Over the past few years there’s been a marked shift in the medical world that’s led to an acceptance of Mindfulness as an effective alternative treatment for a range of acute and chronic conditions.

For example, in April 2015 the BMJ’s Research News led with the headline, ‘Mindfulness based therapy is as effective as anti-depressants in preventing depression relapse’, for a piece looking at a UK study previously reported in The Lancet.

Whilst in another recent piece in the Huffington Post, I looked at how the practice of Mindfulness was being used to help some of the estimated 4 million diabetics in the UK.

Of course, erectile dysfunction can affect men at any age, but it can be particularly traumatic if the patient is a young male and quite often the causes will be psychological rather than physiological.

A Vicious Circle

It will be about stuff going on in the mind, rather than any underlying medical condition, and coupled with the tendency men can have to bottle things like this up, it can quickly become a vicious circle.

Eating away at the confidence, self-worth and self-esteem, and swiftly moving from being a performance anxiety to full-blown erectile dysfunction — and then the very foundations of the Shibboleth of Manhood are shaken to their core and you are not just looking over the precipice of a sheer cliff of self-doubt, but in danger of falling down!

Maybe Mindfulness — Mindful Breathing exercises — Understanding and taking a more Mindful approach to daily life, can help restore perspective, provide a counter balance and allow one’s sense of ‘self and inner agency to be regained.

Becoming aware of awareness, focusing on the present moment experience, and allowing one’s thoughts whether good or bad to just come and go, can provide a space between thought and action that can help give some objective distance.

I think the Doctor and her colleagues might be on to something, not least because Mindfulness is free, it requires no kit or fancy paraphernalia — Only You — And nobody need ever know you are doing it.

However, I also think there is something else we can all do and that’s to start to act with Open-Hands and Open-Hearts towards each other.

If you feel someone close to you, or perhaps not so close, is in need of help, compassion and understanding, extend your hand and open your heart.

Be interested and listen for the song beneath their words.

It may just make the difference!

End Piece

Having written a million plus published words over the past couple of years on leadership excellence, navigating complexity, working with change, well being, well doing and Mindfulness, I am all about making the complex less complex, the tough stuff not so tough and putting the unreachable within reach of everyone.

As well as being the author of ‘Uncovering Mindfulness: In Search Of A Life More Meaningful’ – All new updated 2nd Edition now available on Amazon and www.bookboon.com where there are now a further 11 e-books in the ‘Uncovering Mindfulness’ series; the ‘Coffee & A Cup of Mindfulness’ and the ‘Mindful Hacks For Mindful Living & Mindful Working’ series – I am also a Contributing Author with The Huffington Post and a Contributing Writer with Thrive Global.

You can follow the continuing journey Uncovering Mindfulness on Twitter @TheMindfulBook and at @Paul_Mudd and check out my wider work here.