With suicide prevention month coming to a close last month, I felt men’s mental health wasn’t talked about enough. 

Men’s mental health is a crisis in this country that needs to be talked about more. According to studies by American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2020, “men died by suicide 3.88 times more than women.” Additionally, men accounted for 69.68% of American suicide deaths. The men’s suicide number is also rapidly increasing with one man dying of suicide every 14.4 minutes. These statistics will only keep rising if we don’t do something about it. Society has outcasted men’s feelings which creates an environment for toxic masculinity to be bred. 

Toxic masculinity is a set of attitudes and ways of behaving associated with men that is regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole. Toxic masculinity and men’s mental health problems go hand in hand. 

Men are told that having feelings is a sign of weakness and that they need to “man up” when they are feeling sad or expressing some kind of emotion. Men feel helpless that there isn’t anything else they can do to suppress these feelings, and ultimately end up taking their life because they believe that it was the only way out. 

One of the ways I think we could be able to help control the suicide numbers would be trying to fix the ways we think upon mental health and therapy. I think it’s important to teach young men that it’s okay to talk about their feelings amongst each other. Young men need to know that mental health is a serious thing, and that their feelings matter. 

Another way we could help control the men’s suicide numbers would be to give more access to outlets that people could be able to talk to. If there were more mental health professionals in schools, they could establish better relationships with the students which would lead to students opening up more about their feelings. 

Lastly, I believe that if we could learn more about mental health in school, people would be more desensitized to expressing their feelings. I think it is important for everyone to be able to learn about mental health and how it affects your day to day life. I don’t think men would be committing suicide as much if they were able to understand that it’s not just them that are feeling this way and that there is help out there.

If more men were able to hear messages on how it’s okay to feel this way and it doesn’t make you less of a man, we would see a massive decline in suicide and toxic masculinity in our society.