Mark the day for your staff with these resource.
We know that you’re already swamped with all kinds of tasks, so we’ve prepared a cheat-sheet of relevant information and activity ideas for you to use or adapt for the upcoming International Men’s Day. Feel free to make any changes as you see fit and tailor the template to your needs and wants.
Useful facts about men’s mental health:
- A large body of empirical research supports the belief that men are reluctant to seek help from health professionals. Men are less likely than women to seek help for problems as diverse as depression, substance abuse, physical disabilities, and stressful life events. When men do seek help, they ask fewer questions than do women.
- Men are much more likely to self-harm than women. The CDC reckons that men account for about 80% of suicides in the US. This might be explained by the fact that men tend to keep silent about their problems and are more averse to seeking therapeutic help.
- Internalizing the ideological position that men should be tough, competitive, and emotionally inexpressive can have detrimental effects on a man’s physical and mental health.
- Men tend to be more “stoic” in their responses to stressors, while women are more expressive. This means that men try to control, accept, or not think about the problem; women seek social support, distract themselves, avoid the problem, and pray.
- Some of the typical unhealthy coping mechanisms men tend to use in order to deal with their stress – whether or not they’re aware that they are in fact utilizing a coping mechanism – may include:
- Self-distraction: binge-watching TV, doom-scrolling on social media, playing video games – doing anything that keeps the mind occupied.
- Escape: Excessive substance use (e.g. alcohol consumption), binge-eating, over-exercising – doing anything that keeps the body occupied.
- Social withdrawal: Withdrawing from friends, family and colleagues, unusual/excessive number of sick days, eating alone – in essence, trying to isolate themselves.
- Externalization: Losing their temper, becoming snappy and irritable, impatience and anti-social behaviour – taking out their emotions on others instead of recognising and acknowledging them as valid.
Here are some ideas for activities you might use to open the conversation about men’s mental health:
- Show that you care by providing your male staff with an extra sponsored credit within your Kara Connect Wellbeing Hub – so that they can use the opportunity and give therapy a try if they haven’t already. They will appreciate the gesture, even if they use the credit for something else. It’s a great way to say: we’re here for you.
- Get people talking: schedule an hour-long wellbeing chat for male staff to sit down, drink a cup of something warm and talk about how they’ve been feeling – at work or at home. Make it cozy by offering snacks and lighting candles – and emphasize that there’s no pressure to join in. Consider hiring a psychologist to oversee the session. Some of the topics you might focus on include:
- Self-talk and internal monologue: how does your self-talk sound? Is it constructive or destructive?
- Gender roles and expectations: what does masculinity mean to you? What are the strengths and weaknesses of performing these gender roles, and how can we shape our expectations of ourselves in light of them?
- Schedule some kind of physical activity for men and women alike – book a friendly football match, reserve a tennis court or a badminton court, go out for some darts – and invite their families to join in.
- Arrange for a compliment-box to be placed in the cafeteria and print out slips of paper with male employees names on them. Encourage your staff to write something nice about the guys, something they appreciate or like about them, with or without signing them. Then, hand them out after a designated amount of time.
- Note that some employees may receive fewer compliments than others – if so, you can always write a couple of compliments of your own before you hand them out to even out the disparities. If your workplace has had a tense atmosphere or recent cases of bullying, this may not be an appropriate idea.
- Note that some employees may receive fewer compliments than others – if so, you can always write a couple of compliments of your own before you hand them out to even out the disparities. If your workplace has had a tense atmosphere or recent cases of bullying, this may not be an appropriate idea.
Sources:
Addis ME, Mahalik JR. Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. Am Psychol. 2003 Jan;58(1):5-14. doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.58.1.5. PMID: 12674814.
Courtenay, W. H. (2000). Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men’s well-being: A theory of gender and health. Social Science and Medicine, 50, 1385–1401.
Cf. https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html
Courtenay, W. H. (2000).
Thoits, P. A. (1995). Stress, coping and social support processes: Where are we? What next? Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 35 , 53–79 (Extra Issue).