Men’s Mental Health Month: It’s Time to Talk

June is Men's Mental Health Month, but honestly, for a lot of us, talking about mental health doesn’t come easy. It can feel awkward or completely foreign. Growing up, so many of us were raised with the, “be tough, keep going, handle it yourself” mentality. Maybe you picked up the idea that showing feelings made you weak. Or that being a good husband, dad, son, or friend meant always putting everyone else before yourself. For a lot of us, we end up just saying, “I’ll deal with it later.” But when is later?

Men don’t reach out for mental health help nearly as often as women. Almost 80% of suicide deaths in the U.S. are men. That statistic isn’t meant to scare anyone, but it’s a wake-up call. Behind those numbers, there's always a real person, a brother, a father, a friend, who probably spent years thinking he had to carry everything alone.

Most men become the go to for everyone else. They show up, provide, help out, and just get things done. There’s pride in that, but it's easy to feel like support is for everyone else, while you’re supposed to power through. After a while, it wears you down. It's like carrying a backpack that gets a little heavier every day. At first you hardly notice it, but eventually you're exhausted and can't remember what it felt like not to carry so much. Struggling doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it just means being irritable more often, feeling disconnected, throwing yourself into work, losing interest, feeling numb, or staying busy so you don't have to actually slow down and face whatever’s on the inside.

Lots of men become experts at pretending they're okay, even when they’re overwhelmed or stuck. But many of us are never taught or shown what it looks like to reach out for help. Being strong isn’t about ignoring your problems or pretending they don’t get to you. It’s not about having all the answers or suffering quietly. Strength can be saying you’re stressed. Calling a friend. Opening up to your partner. Taking care of yourself instead of running on empty. It can be sitting in a therapist’s office and saying, “I don’t know where to start, but I can’t keep doing this alone.”

We don’t need to reach a breaking point to deserve help. We don’t have to wait until everything is falling apart, or your stress gets unbearable. We don’t have to stop being tough, or the reliable guy everyone counts on. Being strong doesn't have to come at the expense of being human. There's room for both.

Guest author: Kyle Hoskins, Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, AMFT 153130 Supervised by Jeniffer McMackin, LMFT