12.5% of men in the UK are suffering from one of the common mental health disorders✝

Talking about mental health can be difficult for anyone and statistically, it&rsquo;s men who are more likely to suffer in silence*. Good Living asked four men to share their tales of speaking up and seeking help…(Left to right, below) Tony Howarth, 60, is a capability manager. He worked as a Samaritans volunteer in his 50s following mental health struggles in his youth.Jonny Benjamin, 32, is a mental health campaigner and author. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in his 20s.Andy Crisp, 41, is a PR and marketing consultant. He suffered from postnatal depression after the birth of his first daughter.Greg Arundell, 24, is an actor and writer. He had a mental health crisis in his teens after the death of his older brother.<img alt="asdamenshealth__square" class="ci-image ci-square" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/asdamenshealth__square_GL?scl=1">Can you describe the mental health struggles you have faced?Greg: My eldest brother, Edward, was severely disabled and when I was 14, he died. I felt I needed to be strong for my family and bottled up the grief. It felt like a dark cloud had covered me and weighed me down. A year later, I had a breakdown. I woke up and didn&rsquo;t think I could face the day. It was suffocating.Tony: I was about 20 when I started seeing things. I remember looking up at the night sky and seeing just a wall of hard black. This was in the 1970s and I was scared to see a doctor in case it went on my record and I lost my job. Eventually, I was diagnosed with psychosis.Andy: For me, it came at what should have been one of the happiest times of my life &ndash; the birth of my first daughter, Ffion, in September 2015. I had always thought I&rsquo;d make an amazing dad, but when she came home from the hospital, I felt overwhelmed. I was crippled by anxiety and struggled to help look after her, even just changing her nappy. I felt completely out of my depth.Jonny: At school, I always felt different and struggled to make friends. At 15, depression hit but I didn&rsquo;t see a doctor until I was 17. The waiting list for mental health services was too long, and I decided going to university for ‘the time of my life&rsquo; would solve it. In 2008, my final year, I had a breakdown; I felt like I was possessed. I was put in a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder &ndash; and a month later planned to end my life.What was the turning point?Jonny: I was stopped on the edge of Waterloo Bridge by a stranger**. He was so non-judgemental and compassionate. The key was just him saying, ‘You&rsquo;re going to get better&rsquo; &ndash; no one had said that to me in hospital. The next couple of years were tough; I didn&rsquo;t want to talk to therapists, I just wanted to run away from it all. Finally, in my mid-twenties, I started to talk about my disorder in YouTube videos and the response was amazing.Tony: My turning point was calling Samaritans &ndash; just having someone listen was a massive thing for me. It gave me the confidence to see a doctor, who prescribed medication; the difference it made was phenomenal.Andy: For me, it was a text from a friend the day after Ffion came home to ask how it was going and I replied honestly, ‘This is horrible, I hate it, I don&rsquo;t know what to do.&rsquo; Seconds later, he rang to say he&rsquo;d been through the same thing. He basically said, ‘You&rsquo;ll never be the dad you think you&rsquo;re going to be &ndash; you&rsquo;ve never done it before.&rsquo; It really helped.Greg: I was at boarding school and I felt so shut off. I left Mum a voicemail saying, ‘I&rsquo;m really not OK.&rsquo; My parents came to the school and I started counselling two weeks later. <img alt="jonny-benjamin__square" class="ci-image ci-square" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/jonny-benjamin__square_GL?scl=1">Was there a point where you knew things were starting to get better?Jonny: I started seeing progress in therapy. I began actually wanting to see people and engage in society. If you&rsquo;re in the depths of depression, you struggle with the symptoms and your judgement is clouded so you think you&rsquo;ll never get better. It&rsquo;s important for people to know you can get there.Greg: I started to look forward to counselling and talking about what had been good &ndash; and bad &ndash; for me that week. It&rsquo;s the little victories that make you realise you&rsquo;re on the way.Andy: Bronwen, our second daughter, was born in January and I was so anxious that the same thing would happen again. Bizarrely, she came along so quickly, I ended up delivering her in our bathroom at home! I was like, ‘I can deal with anything after that!&rsquo; Weirdly, the thing that put me in a dark place was also what ‘saved&rsquo; me.Tony: For me, it was the realisation that I had been ill three times &ndash; and I had also got better three times.<img alt="mens-health-mental-asda-goodliving__square" class="ci-image ci-square" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/mens-health-mental-asda-goodliving__square_GL?scl=1">Why do you think men find it difficult to address their mental health issues?Jonny: I used to cry a lot as a kid, and people would say, ‘Come on, big boys don&rsquo;t cry.&rsquo; Being told from a young age that boys shouldn&rsquo;t be vulnerable has a lasting impact. Boys I speak to in schools are often embarrassed to talk about how they feel.Tony: It&rsquo;s the typical things people say, like ‘man up&rsquo; and ‘sort yourself out&rsquo; that stop men talking. You&rsquo;re brought up to take the role of provider in life, so if there&rsquo;s a problem, you sort it out.Andy: Yes, growing up, my role models were my granddads and my dad. They were breadwinners &ndash; you&rsquo;d never have caught them talking about feelings. In 20 years&rsquo; time, I hope we&rsquo;ll be the role models boys can look up to and know you haven&rsquo;t got to put on a brave face.Greg: I hope it will start to bleed into older generations, too. My dad went through a bad spell last year but got the help he needed &ndash; and I think it&rsquo;s because he&rsquo;d seen me open up.What do you do to help maintain good mental health now?Tony: I still get depressed and anxious but when I do, I&rsquo;ll go for a run which I love, talk to my wife or see friends.Greg: I&rsquo;m very lucky that I&rsquo;m no longer in the situation that I was a year ago. It will always be there but it&rsquo;s taken more of a back seat. I find writing helps, and playing team sports. Or just taking time to myself to sit and think.Jonny: Being kinder to myself, more compassionate. Sleep is so important, and I am mindful of stress and not working myself into the ground.Andy: Ffion is talking a lot now, so I get a lot of affirmation from her. At the coast recently, I was teaching her to fly a kite and I actually took a physical step back and thought, ‘This is it, this is something to hang on to.&rsquo;<img alt="mens-mental-health-asda-good-living__square" class="ci-image ci-square" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/mens-mental-health-asda-good-living__square_GL?scl=1">What else have you learnt?Tony: ‘This too will pass&rsquo;. No matter how bad you feel, it will change.Andy: I feel I&rsquo;m a better person for it, much more empathetic. I want to hear other people&rsquo;s stories and help them.Jonny: I appreciate life so much more. It was colourless before; it felt like a burden. Now I get moments where I go for a walk or I see friends and I&rsquo;ve just got this power &ndash; like, wow, there&rsquo;s colour back in life. I feel much happier.Greg: The main thing is being able to talk and not bottle it up. To realise you&rsquo;re not alone and there&rsquo;s someone else out there going through it, too. I&rsquo;ve gone from feeling ‘this is the worst thing in the world&rsquo; to realising I can take something positive from it.<h2>Where to go for support</h2><img alt="matt-johnson-the-naked-professors-podcast__square" class="left" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/matt-johnson-the-naked-professors-podcast__square_GL?scl=1" style="width: 75px;">We asked Matt Johnson &ndash; co-host of The Naked Professors podcast and mental health campaigner &ndash; for his advice…  Speak upThe best thing you can do is communicate. Suppressing your emotions will only make you feel worse. People will want to help and if you&rsquo;re worried about talking to friends or family, try a helpline first. Be kind to yourselfTake practical measures to make yourself feel better. Simple things like drinking more water, taking deep breaths, getting outside for a walk or a run or even going to the cinema and escaping into a film can help. #AskTwiceIf you&rsquo;re worried about someone, ask them how they are &ndash; twice. Make a connection and make sure you get a straight answer. It takes two minutes and it can change somebody&rsquo;s life. Find online or phone supportCALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), a charity for men in crisis, has a helpline open from 5pm to midnight, 365 days a year &ndash; call 0800 58 58 58 or, for more info, visit thecalmzone.net.Samaritans Call 116 123 free, 24/7 or visit samaritans.org.Young Minds offers free support 24/7 to young people in need of urgent help &ndash; text YM to 85258. For further details, visit youngminds.org.uk.Mind For advice on caring for your own mental health and supporting others, visit mind.org.uk. *Source: YouGov survey for mentalhealth.org.uk, 2016.**Jonny tells his story in his book The Stranger on the Bridge.✝Source: <a href="http://menshealthforum.org.uk/key-data-mental-health" target="_blank">Men's Health Forum</a>.

Time to talk: Four men discuss mental health

By Asda Good Living,18th June 2019

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