male mental health
Wellness is gendered, say experts, with damaging consequences.
Hussain Manawer is fuelling conversations around suicide and mental health.
Chester Bennington, the lead singer of alt-rock band Linkin Park, has died at 41.
When you join at 16 or 17 you go through real intense psychological change, become ultra-loyal and this fight or flight mechanism is manipulated - you are conditioned to fight, it becomes normal. I had become blinkered to army life. I think it is why people struggle so much when leaving. I left the army in 2013 and felt so different to other people. I had no experience of civilian life.
Contemporary hip-hop is telling men that it is okay to feel vulnerable. It is telling men that it is okay to talk about feeling vulnerable. It is telling men that it is okay to be human. Hip-hop's challenge of masculinity is profoundly liberating, particularly for those feeling constricted or poisoned by toxic masculinity.
'...the floor above me was almost like a drug den.'
Dressed in jet black, Rio Ferdinand wears his tailored suits like he wears his success - with pride and a quiet confidence
I do remember at the time that anorexia and bulimia were well covered, almost clichéd topics in the press. But always, always, the concern was for women. Boys just didn't have these problems. My parents never noticed; they haven't since. I don't expect they ever will.
This is a call for all men out there, to look at our female friends, find inspiration, and say no to the perfect body image. We are perfect as we are. We are perfect with or without beer bellies, with our without hair, with or without man-boobs.
Given that erectile dysfunction is a common side effect, not only of depression, but also sometimes the antidepressants used to treat it, are we piling on to laugh at an issue that is just a further cause of shame and embarrassment to people who are already struggling in life?