Held annually on March 8, International Women’s Day is a fixture of what we might call the “awareness calendar”—a loose set of days, weeks, and months dedicated to informing the public about various issues. It’s unfortunate that some men’s response to the International Men’s Day is “so when is International Men’s Day?”, especially when the answer is that it already exists, on November 19, and is designed to highlight issues men face such as abuse, homelessness, suicide and violence.
The misogyny of MDŽ aside, the relative lack of awareness of Men’s Day compared to Women’s Day illustrates that men’s mental health remains a particularly tough nut to crack. It is true that in recent decades there has been a huge improvement in our attitude towards mental health in general. However, men still try to talk about their problems – although the statistics differ, women are much more open about their mental health.
This is partly because we are less good at recognizing bad mental states. As we report, about 40 percent of people don’t know that men can experience postpartum depression—perhaps not surprising, given cultural attitudes toward parenthood. Childbirth is rightly recognized as a transformative experience for women, but even though fathers are more often in the delivery room than the pub these days, they’re still seen as quite an auxiliary element of management. Dads can’t have it bad, they think, because moms have it worse.
“ 40 percent of people don’t know that men can experience postpartum depression “
It’s a mistake to see mental health as a zero-sum game in this way, and we still have a lot more work to do to understand how men’s depression manifests – often as withdrawal and risk-taking, rather than tears and sadness. Hopefully, International Men’s Day can do some work in raising awareness, but we must also remember that awareness is simply not enough. Health systems need to take mental health of all kinds much more seriously and treat it in the same way as physical health.
Leave a Reply