Tackling Men’s Health Through ‘Movember’ Quarantine?

I’m sure many of you have experienced a child leaving home, in August, my eldest son packed his bags and moved from Singapore to England to progress his studies, it’s a heart wrenching moment for any parent, balancing your pride with something that feels like a part of your body being removed! As if this is not hard enough, the knowledge of having no easy and flexible way to travel compounds the emotions, back in August, it felt like we put our son on a one-way plane to the UK!!

For me, this type of “life event” is a trigger, an opportunity to reset on priorities and put the smaller issues back into context. As a father of sons (and a daughter too), I’ve spent many years thinking about men’s health, particularly in younger male adults. As a male community, we represent ? of all deaths from suicide, in fact, for males aged 20-39, suicide is the #2 killer! This combined with a lack of awareness about prostate and testicular cancer, both preventable if detected early, reduces our lifespan on average by 6 years compared to our female friends.

I have a really close relationship with my eldest son, I put this down to the significant investment into his wellbeing while growing up. Some of you may know my passion for rugby, which played a major role in shaping him, an environment that provides ideal role models, structure, discipline, trust, teamwork, integrity and the perfect channel to engage with young adults to talk about wellbeing.

Why am I feeling so passionate about this topic? Well after a great time with my son, I flew back to Singapore, for a two week hotel quarantine, providing a unique “isolation opportunity”, an experience and environment that heightened my focus and reflection on wellbeing and the accelerating impact of COVID on our mental health. It just so happened, I landed in November, so become the perfect opportunity for me to re-establish my support for men’s health by sponsoring “Movember”.

I should say, the pandemic impacts everyone on the planet and the challenges run deep, but the timing and motivation for my “Movember”, was driven by the increasingly acute suicide statistics in males and the further pressures on our community, also considering, most men are NOT wired or comfortable talking about these issues at the best of times – in a nutshell “men’s health is in crisis”. Sponsoring the initiative is a good start, but learning to share personal feelings, taking a brave step to talk about stress, the awareness of prostate cancer and suicide prevention is vital, I feel something every one of us can start doing straightaway.

All combined with the increasing stress and work life balance challenge, my commitment is to proactively engage on this topic with open conversation, women and men, starting here in this blog!

I hope many of you will join me in the dialog, together we can improve mental health and wellbeing for everyone.

Movember funds critical mental health projects. DONATE HERE