Here’s a simple way to help men – praise them
Chief executive, Canterbury Men’s Centre
It’s that magical time of year again. Today, November 19, is a big day for those whose job is caring for men. It’s International Men’s Day. I’m pretty unusual in that I run a service taking care of men. We provide community counselling, brief social work interventions, care for male survivors of sexual abuse and care for dads. The guys seeking our help are dealing with common issues: family separation, grief, different kinds of childhood trauma; compounded in many cases by substance abuse and anxiety/depression.
Most are normal men going through something that could happen to anyone, and they need a hand. They don’t need much, really, but what they do need they need desperately. And it’s easy to take care of them. The secret is, very few of them have had care before and that makes us the most caring service that ever worked with them. Most of them won’t require support again. It’s just not relevant to them mostly as they get on fine. But when they did need it, the care was there and their need was acute.
I’ve become really fond of the men coming to our service. I’ve interviewed more than 1200 of them. I ask about the main issue that brought them to us and about their lives more broadly. More than 900 were having suicidal thoughts or worse. Three hundred had experienced sexual trauma, usually in childhood, but had never been asked about it before or disclosed it.
I know that sounds like hard work but it hasn’t felt that way. I’ve been captivated by what these men have shared with me. Regular guys just trying to make something out of the mess they were in. Despite most of the stereotypes about men, they were aware of their situation and willing to share it when asked.
One thing that is hard work is trying to address how men have been neglected by the healthcare and social care systems. Too often men’s problems are seen as a problem with men. ‘‘Men don’t ask for help’’, or ‘‘men should see the doctor’’ are common refrains. I despair when highly trained mental health professionals refer lightly to ‘‘toxic masculinity’’ while never talking about the scarcity of services and programmes to care for men as a group.
There’s a lot of work to do to improve men’s wellbeing through health and social services, but there is something simple we can all do to make things better for men and that’s where International Men’s Day comes in.
The secret to this approach is that men respond very well to praise. We are starved for it. We are rarely told we are valued just for being ourselves. The cultural narrative around men is that we aren’t doing enough or what we are doing is wrong.
That’s why, after a decade of procrastinating, last year I got behind a small group to set up International Men’s Day New Zealand. We’re trying to start a Mexican wave of gratitude and appreciation for men that gets passed from one person to the next.
At last year’s events, we had 300 people fill in a postcard telling us about a man they admire or love and why they feel this way. I read those and weep. Beautiful stories about what men bring to our lives. I need it as a man, but more than anything our men need this as well.