A Fascinating Conversation about Men, Mental Health, Suicide and Spirituality

Where are all the men? That was what I uttered in frustration a few weeks ago. You can read my blog about it here.

After spending time exploring wellbeing in my local community and meeting with community leaders I’d noticed there was a lack of men. IMHO communities are in desperate need for a warm and compassionate energy from our men.

How can we get men involved? Where are they all?

There is a crisis with men’s mental health at the moment. Death by suicide is two thirds higher for men than women and suicide is the biggest killer for men under 50. Every 40 seconds a life is lost through suicide.

I know that we need to include men in community work, we need an energy from men which is compassionate and loving (not the stereo-typical competitive or fixing) and we also need to be able to reach out to men to include them on the community wellbeing journey.

I turned to a dear friend Chukumeka (Chukes) Maxwell. He’s passionate about supporting people and is founder of Action To Prevent Suicide – a Community Interest Company.

In this far reaching podcast we go straight to the heart of the issue and I mean ‘Heart’.

• We see that people who have survived suicide reveal that they don’t really want to die they just want to stop the pain in the moment.
  Chukes explains the difference between heart-felt courage (around love and support) and the gut-feeling of survival and competitiveness and how men often fall into the latter
• We explore the loss of connection to the divinity
• And we contemplate how stereo types keep us fixed in seeing labels, rather than seeing deeply beyond the labels to the deep joy and consistent energy that is the essence of us all.

You can listen to the podcast HERE. I hope you enjoy it.