Movember: Fears over NI men’s mental health
Last updated 2nd Nov 2020
Northern Ireland’s Interim Mental Health Champion, Siobhan O’Neill, has said there are "real concerns" for men’s mental health during the current phase of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Downtown and Cool FM spoke to Ms O’Neill to talk about men’s mental health ahead of Movember.
During the first wave poor mental health was a topic on everyone’s mind and raised serious concerns.
However, now that the number of Coronavirus cases continue to be in the triple figures here there are fresh fears over how this wave will affect people’s mental wellbeing.
She said: “We’re now concerned about the impact of this wave of the pandemic and the possibility of wide-spread job losses.
“We do know that job losses may affect men more than women.
“So, as we enter this next phase of the pandemic we remain very concerned about men’s mental wellbeing as well as that of women.”
NI is currently in the second week of a four-week circuit breaker which meant the hospitality sector, hairdressers and beauticians had to close again.
Ms O’Neill said closing these sectors again could cause people to worry and stress about further job losses.
She said: “There are the restrictions that we need to adhere to, to suppress the virus and there’s very real fear of the virus as well.
“In addition to that lots of people are losing their jobs and their livelihoods are threatened, which again causes a lot of stress and pressure.
“For some people they are at increased risk of mental health problems as a result of all these things.
“So, it can be more difficult for men whenever those opportunities are taken from them as a result of the restrictions.
“Men are less likely to have that support network and within their support network they're less likely to talk about mental health and talk about their feelings generally.
“So, it can be more difficult for men to disclose that they are struggling and to get the help that we know will be able to get them through this.
“There’s still a perception that this is a sign of weakness and that this is not a traditionally masculine thing to do to talk about your emotions.
“We know men are much more likely to die by suicide than women.
“So, there’s a whole cohort of men there who have died who have never talked about their feelings and about what was going on for them and that’s incredibly sad because these are preventable deaths.
“So, getting men to talk about their feelings is so, so important.
Darren Donnelly (20), a trainee mental health nurse and the founder of the charity TEAMS, decided he would take part in Movember and donate the money to a suicide prevention charity.
He said in recent years, in the community of West Belfast, death by suicide and poor mental health issues have been normalised.
He said: “When you hear someone say someone has taken their own life, your like, right yeah, okay that’s happened again.
“Of course, your sad and have sympathy for them, but like I say it’s became so normal and I want to try and change that.”
He said that there is still a massive stigma attached to men talking about their feelings and that often they feel like they can’t speak up.
He added: “If they’re having any thoughts in their heads, they can’t admit to them because It makes them look weak and we’re meant to be men, we’re meant to be masculine, we can’t suffer from anything, so we can’t, but that view point is in my opinion is totally wrong.
“They think that they can’t speak so they’ve bottled everything up and eventually if you’ve bottled too much things up the bottle's eventually going to crack.
“The thought of men’s mental health has always been that they can’t speak, and they have to be the man, like all we can say is man up and they’ll be alright.
“It goes much more beyond that.
“If you are struggling it is okay to talk, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
To help Darren reach his fundraising goal click here to donate.