Attitudes towards men’s mental health needs more than lip service

Re: “Mental Health Week: needing empathy has never been more important in SE Alta,” Prairie Opinion, May 6

I’ve found there is still too much platitudinous lip-service towards proactive mental illness prevention for males, as well as treatment. Various media will state the obvious, that society must open up its collective minds and common dialogue when it comes to far more progressively addressing the challenge of more fruitfully treating and preventing such illness in general; however, they will typically fail to address the problem of ill men, or even boys, refusing to open up and/or ask for help due to their fear of being perceived by peers, etcetera, as weak/non-masculine.

The social ramifications exist all around us; indeed, it is endured, however silently, by males of/with whom we are aware/familiar or to whom so many of us are closely related. (The suicide of the late actor and comedian Robin Williams comes to my mind.)

Even today, there remains a mentality, albeit perhaps a subconscious one: Men can take care of themselves, and boys often are basically little men. It’s the same mentality that might explain why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse.

It could be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset; one in which so many men, even with anonymity, prefer not to ‘complain’ to some stranger/author about his torturous childhood, as that is what ‘real men’ do. (I tried multiple times contacting the book’s author via internet websites in regards to this non-addressed florescent elephant in the room, but I received no response.)