Jack (a friend of mine) and I were recently visiting another friend, Alan, in a psychiatric hospital (both names have been altered). We are all around the age of sixty. Alan had been sectioned because of mental health issues. He has a history of severe depression, although this episode was of a slightly different nature. During the visit, I explained to them both how I’d been prescribed anti-depressants because of the recent ordeal I had been through. Alan asked me how I felt about going to see my doctor about depression. I asked him what he meant.
“Well, didnt you find it hard to admit to your doctor that you needed help?” he asked. I told him that I didn’t. He explained to us both that, for him, that was the hardest thing about it all. He had been in a desperate situation, but felt unable to seek help. He said that having to admit to someone that he was unable to cope with life was something he felt ashamed of and embarrassed about. For me, this was never an issue. I just realised that I could cope no more on my own, so I sought help. Problem solved – well, on one level, at least.
Then…
Jack expressed exactly the same sentiment as Alan. “I’d find it difficult to do that, too,” he admitted.
This, for me, was a thought-provoking moment that has had me contemplating about the male gender with regards to mental health ever since. It is widely stated that men are less likely to be able to talk about mental health and are therefore more prone to suicide. What is it that makes the majority of men be like this? What makes me different? What can be done about it?
It’s the thought of being seen as weak. But if you are feeling in a certain way, isn’t it “stronger” to be able to talk about and reveal your “weakness” to others? Maybe I’m wrong? Maybe it’s stronger to keep it all in and battle on. But it becomes a form of self-denial, and with the much publicised things such as the LGBT movement, and the often terrifying but liberating, life-changing moment of “coming out”, it is becoming quite evident that the denial of who you really are is unhealthy and damaging to mental health. In today’s society, the “coming out as being gay” is a very brave thing to do. It shouldn’t have to be, but it is. In parallel with this, why should “coming out as being weak” be an issue? Why does being “strong” make you better than a person who is “weak”? We are who we are and we cannot change it. In the same way that a tall person shouldn’t be ashamed of being tall, a short person shouldn’t be ashamed of being short, a white person shouldn’t be ashamed of being white, a black person shouldn’t be afraid of being black. And, of course, people who are weak in some ways may be stronger in other ways. It’s not anything to be ashamed of and it’s not anything that we should judge other people on. It makes you wonder just how many people have been finally pushed over the edge by the inability to admit to their “weaknesses”, all because of society’s expectations.
Society is the problem. Society expects. People respond to what is expected instead of just being who they are. I guess I’m quite lucky in this way. I don’t fall into the typical male group. I don’t have any need to be masculine or otherwise. I just behave the way I do. Adopting gender-stereotypical behaviour for the wrong reasons is not generally the way to be true to yourself. Some of my behaviour may come across as masculine, some of it may not. When I go into work in the morning (a predominantly male office) and one of my colleagues asks how I am, I’m not afraid to say that I’m depressed (not in an attention-seeking way, but as a matter of fact). Then, in the next moment, I’ll join in with all the office banter and give the most alpha of males as good as I get. Why should it be any different to going into the office and saying that I have a bad back because I’ve been building the decking, which I have done before now. We need to step back and look at ourselves objectively rather than be restricted by society’s expectations.
I occasionally explain to people just how debilitating depression can be, and how it can prevent you from doing the simplest of tasks (I’ll save the details of this for another blog). Those who don’t suffer with it seem to find it fascinating. In our office, we are all of an age that, even if we haven’t experienced it to any great extent ourselves, we have all seen its effects on someone close to us. A colleague from a different office recently lost his wife to suicide as a result of depression. Another lost his best friend’s son to exactly the same. I believe that they don’t fully understand it, but they just know about it and that it clearly exists as an illness. When I explained to them exactly how it has affected me (but not in an attention-seeking way – just matter of fact), it was as if they were beginning to understand it for the first time in their lives.
So I’ve figured that, if I can explain in my blogs about how depression can manifest itself and how it has affected me in a crippling manner, maybe I can help some people to understand that they are not alone and that it is nothing to be ashamed of, and help others to learn a little about how it may be affecting people around them. I can do this because I’m not afraid of being who I am and I’m not afraid of admitting to what society sometimes cruelly perceives as “weakness”.
Society has a lot to answer for.
MARK D PRITCHARD writes... 