How A Self-Confessed 'Basket Case' Overcame Growing Up In A Refugee Camp

'I remember thinking if I commit suicide there’s one less mouth to feed.'
|

”I remember thinking if I commit suicide there’s one less mouth to feed,” Kenny Mammarella-D’Cruz tells HuffPost UK. 

In 2014, male suicide accounted for some 76% of all suicides. It is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45.

Talking to his best friend, Alex Beard, the 52-year-old men’s coach recalls the trauma he faced as his family fled Uganda while it was under Idi Amin’s rule.

With his family on the tyrant’s death list, he left the country, aged seven, with his mother and five-year-old brother.

Despite the surviving the escape, the experience of the refugee camp took its toll on his mental health. 

As part of HuffPost UK’s Building Modern Men series, Mammarella-D’Cruz highlights how talking to a friend changed everything. 

“You’re the one that made sense,” he tells Beard, a celebrity personal trainer. 

Men who’ve been very depressed are less likely than women to talk to anyone about it (55% of men compared to 67% of women), blogs Jane Powell, Director of CALM for HuffPost UK.

 

HuffPost UK is running a month-long focus around men to highlight the pressures they face around identity and to raise awareness of the epidemic of suicide. To address some of the issues at hand, Building Modern Men presents a snapshot of life for men, the difficulty in expressing emotion, the challenges of speaking out, as well as kick starting conversations around male body image, LGBT identity, male friendship and mental health.
 
To blog for Building Modern Men, email ukblogteam@huffingtonpost.com. If you would like to read our features focused around men, click here.