Men's Health Week 2013: Let's talk about it

Three in four people who kill themselves are men.

Led by the Men's Health Forum, this year's Men's Health Week runs from the 10th to 16th June and aims to tackle stigma in men’s mental health and promote mental well-being and help-seeking in men.

The Forum has launched a new campaign challenging men to talk about feeling crap before acting on it and challenging health professionals to help them do it. 

The Forum has a long running interest in mental health. The MHF published the first guidelines on addressing the mental health needs of men and boys and our commitment to expanding and improving our services for men. Our Malehealth website is committed to helping men improve their mental wellbeing. 

Why mental well-being?

• Despite men and women experiencing mental health problems in roughly equal numbers, men are much less likely to be diagnosed and treated for it and the consequences of this can be fatal – the MHF has long highlighted that 75% of all suicides are by men and that  73% of people who go missing are men.
• The Health & Social Care Information Centre 2009 household survey found that about 2.7 million men in England currently have a mental health problem like depression, anxiety or stress.
• Mind research has found that 37% of men are feeling worried or low with the top three concerns being job security, work and money.
• 33% of men are drinking at a potentially harmful level.

For more information:

• on the Men's Health Forum's work on mental well-being
• The Men's Health Week 2013 resource pack
• How are you? Mental well-being on malehealth.co.uk

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