HOW MOUSTACHE MANIA HELPS MEN
The tradition of reforesting the upper lip in November started out as a fund-raising joke in a bar. Now Movember is a charity that raises millions for male health causes
EVERY November many young men begin to grow hair on their upper lip, sporting moustaches ranging from the walrus and the handlebar to the Fu Manchu and the Dali. It’s all in aid of a good cause of course. “The Movember Foundation has grown from humble beginnings to become a global movement of five million men and women all dedicated to changing the face of men’s health,” says the foundation’s CEO Owen Sharp.
The name was coined by young men in an Adelaide pub in 1999, growing taches for a month for charity. Then in 2004 a Melbourne group organised a similar event to raise awareness of prostate cancer and male depression and an international movement was born.
“We’re proud to have funded more than 1,200 projects in prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention,” says Sharp. “But prostate and testicular cancers are on the rise with both set to double in the next 15 years. Half a million men around the world every year take their own lives.
“If we are to achieve our goal by 2030 of reducing the number of men dying prematurely by 25 per cent, then we need more people to join us.”
The scale of the crisis is highlighted in a new poll commissioned by Sharp’s foundation, which reveals that 33 per cent of men claim to have no close friendships or no friends at all. Research has shown that having strong relationships is the biggest protection against poor mental health.
Being socially isolated is known to be a contributory factor in suicide which is the biggest single cause of death for men under 44.
Here we talk to two men who fought depression and won. I’M NATURALLY a very sociable and outgoing person and when I went to Durham University I was keen to make new friends. But within a week of arriving there I quickly became very isolated and lonely.
In my second year I was sharing a house with some other lads who were all on a different time schedule and, apart from the odd night out, it got to the stage where if I wanted to go out for a pint or for dinner, I had no one to go with.
In March 2016 during my second year it started to affect me physically.
I couldn’t sleep and when I eventually did I would sleep for 20 hours and then wake up feeling completely exhausted. I didn’t realise that I was suffering from depression. In the week that everything came to a head I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone apart from checkout cashiers in the supermarket or the barista in the coffee shop. That week I tried to take my own life. Thankfully, I failed in my attempt but to make matters worse, I felt so defeated and weak for having let myself get to that stage that I compounded my isolation by not talking to anyone about what happened until almost a year later. What saved me was getting a French bulldog called Odysseus who made me take responsibility for my own life again as I was now responsible for his. Odie allowed me to say words out loud that I never thought I could, which ultimately helped me get to the stage where I was comfortable enough to talk to my family about what had happened.
Men should not be taking their own lives – luckily, I did not complete my suicide attempt, but I want to do everything that I can to encourage as many men as I can to be comfortable enough to talk.
On December 12 – my 23rd birthday – I will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most weight squatted in 24 hours, by squatting 460,000kg to raise money for the Movember Foundation.
I’ll be putting myself through 24 hours of hell – while sporting an average moustache – because I am passionate about weightlifting and the mental health causes that the charity invests in. six months I was several stone lighter, working out five times a week and had made a great network of friends at the gym. Having friends you can talk to about your problems is incredibly important. In 2015 I started fundraising for Movember as I feel nobody should ever have to go through the horrible time that I did. I want people out there to know that no matter how far gone you are you can always pull yourself back – I’m evidence of that without a doubt. I aim to fight stigma and help create more conversations. I want to show the world that mental illness isn’t something to shy away from. This month I’ll be attempting to grow a Mexican-style bandit moustache – but I’ll have to wait and see what appears. Support Marc’s fundraising for Movember at mobro.co/marcrodwell