November was Men’s Health month and that makes it a great time to talk about Men’s Mental Health.
Talking about the body is easy. Well, most of the time. Guys can get weird about their health. I can understand. They want to seem strong, in control. For all the pressure society places on women to meet a certain physical standard, men receive their fair share, too.
But when it comes to mental health, the tables turn. If you google “symptoms of depression” one of the first that appears from the Mayo Clinic is tearfulness. How common is it for a man to allow himself to become tearful? Our society beats tearfulness out of boys at an early age. Angry outbursts are another symptom. But our society almost rewards anger in men. We sometimes tag it as assertiveness. Then there’s loss of interest in normal activities, like sports. But a man experiencing depression might choose to hide that due to a desire to save face which is so very important. He may be experiencing all these things and have no idea that what he’s going through is actually a treatable, medical condition.
That’s what happens in my book, Getting His Game Back, out January 25, 2022. It’s a romance, but it’s also about mental health. That’s an unusual choice, but one I made on purpose. Mental health in entertainment provides great opportunities to recognize symptoms in ourselves and others, which reduces stigma. Khalil Sarda is falling in love, but he’s also sliding back into depression. For him, the sadness doesn’t come first. It’s irritability. Anger with close friends and colleagues. Behaviors that he doesn’t understand and that are the polar opposite of who he usually is. He also loses pleasure in an activity he loves – basketball. But the change isn’t drastic. Like the irritability, it develops slowly. Then come the more classic signs of depression, feeling sad and hopeless, and sleeping too much.
When I was doing research for Getting His Game Back, I learned that if Khalil had reached out for help when he’d had the earliest symptoms, he probably could have avoided having as severe of a depressive episode as he did. He might not have behaved the way that he did towards his love interest, Vanessa, and could have avoided causing himself so much pain.
I hope that readers of my story can use it as entertainment, but also as an opportunity to ask themselves questions about the men in their lives.
Questions like:
Is he struggling with something?
Was that out of character reaction just an off day, or is there something more behind it?
One thing we can do with the men in our lives is pay attention to the small changes. I mentioned the Mayo Clinic symptoms list earlier and it’s a good resource. They also have one for specifically male symptoms. Ones that stick out to me are escapist behavior like spending a lot of time at work, or controlling behavior like demanding to know where a partner is at all times.
This month Movember, we encouraged the men in our lives to take care of their bodies. As we move forward, let’s not forget their minds. The mental is just as important as the muscle.