Are we vilifying men?

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Man Up Man Down podcast presented by Volker Balluda and David Pawsey. We discuss the pressures and challenges faced by men approaching middle age that we're often too embarrassed to speak about with our friends. You can find us online at www.manupdown.com.

[00:00:26] Enjoy the show and don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. Hello, welcome to another episode of Man Up Man Down. So today we have the pleasure to speak to Anita Maltzter, Anita is a mental health strategist,

[00:00:45] trainer and speaker whose mission it is to help break the stigma surrounding mental ill health and reduce the suicide statistics in predominantly male industries. Desmond Tutu once said, there comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river.

[00:01:01] We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in. So I really like this one. So to this end, she has spent the last few years focusing on male psychology to understand what leads to many men to suicide.

[00:01:15] So Anita, first of all, welcome to our podcast. Hello, thanks for having me. So there's already so much in there just by mentioning Desmond Tutu. But do you want to give us a bit of a background where you're coming from and how you

[00:01:28] ended up focusing on say, men's mental health and men's psychology? Yeah. I mean, we tried to do that. We're not as qualified as you are. Oh, I don't know. I don't know that I am really.

[00:01:42] I think it's interesting what my background, I think it's important to say that my background isn't a therapeutic one. So I don't come at this from a counseling or a therapy background. My journey with mental health really started.

[00:01:56] I used to be a learning and development manager for the Princess Trust. So I was delivering a lot of personal and social development training to youth workers. And what we were recognizing probably sort of back in around about 2010 was that a lot

[00:02:10] of the young people that we worked with experienced problems with their mental health. Our staff didn't really feel that they were equipped to do with what they were seeing on a day-to-day basis.

[00:02:19] So I went and did an instructor course for mental health first age so that I could give them some skills and teach them how to support the young people that they worked with. So that's where it all started really, delivering mental health first aid courses.

[00:02:34] And then I left the Princess Trust in 2015 and started my own business still predominantly at that time delivering mental health first aid products. But it became quite apparent quite quickly that it wasn't enough actually that you can create mental health first aiders.

[00:02:50] But unless you have a culture within your organization that enables people to feel safe, psychologically safe to have those conversations that actually those conversations don't happen and nothing changes. And also the cultures that we create. So that doesn't too-to quote there.

[00:03:08] The cultures that we create in organizations are really, really important because people have to feel that if they speak up about what's causing them distress that that will be taken seriously, that it's not going to impact all their job prospects.

[00:03:22] The mental health strategies are being driven from the top of the organization. So there was a lot in that really. So it made me sort of start delving into the wider picture in terms of workplace mental health.

[00:03:35] And part of that I suppose was I was doing a lot of speaking and training. And at the time I didn't feel like I had any credibility in a way. I didn't have a qualification as I said, I'm not a therapist or a counselor.

[00:03:49] So I didn't feel like I had a qualification that backed that up. What I was saying, although I knew all of this stuff, it was like on paper. It didn't it didn't look like I did.

[00:03:58] So I signed myself up to King's College London and I went off and I did a a master's degree in the psychology and the neuroscience of mental health, which was fascinating because it brings together obviously the physical brain

[00:04:11] and the neuroscience of what's going on, but also the psychology of that as well. So fascinating stuff. But a long sort of that journey, what I was finding was that I was working a lot more with men and in male industries.

[00:04:25] And the reason for that is that I have a huge passion for suicide prevention. And if you know anything about the suicide statistics, 75% of all suicides in male if you work in predominantly male industries. So let's take the construction industry as an example.

[00:04:41] Men in the construction industry are over three and a half times more likely to die by suicide than the male national average. You know, we lose two construction workers to suicide every day in this country.

[00:04:52] And so I was really starting to look at, well, you know, what is it about that demographic? So started to work a lot more with male industry, particularly the construction industry, utilities, manufacturing, engineering.

[00:05:06] And the last year of my degree when it came to sort of writing the dissertation my research project was on the barriers to help seeking in men in the UK construction industry. And so I sort of started off with this idea that and this is going to be

[00:05:22] relevant really to what we're talking about today. So I suppose I always had this idea that women have a tough and as a woman, you know, having gone through life and all the things that women experience, it was just like, you know,

[00:05:33] men don't know they're born, women have it really tough. But when I started to delve into the psychology of men and the suicide statistics around men, and I started to write my dissertation,

[00:05:43] you know, I came out of the other side of that sort of glad I was a man because actually I saw all of the challenges of what it means to be male and, you know, what it means to be a man in today's society.

[00:05:58] And so it sort of set me on a new path, really, of really trying to get under the skin of male psychology and why it is that men find themselves in that position where they think the only option is to take their own life.

[00:06:10] And I suppose that has led me down this path, I think, you know, when we start to think about, you know, what makes it so difficult for men these days. And what I'm hearing a lot when I go out to do talks and training sessions,

[00:06:24] I quite often get mothers of boys who come up to me afterwards and they'll say to me that they're struggling. They don't know how to help their boys at the moment. And what we're hearing is the boys don't know how to be male in today's society.

[00:06:45] You know, what does it mean to be a man today? Where are the male role models? And there's a lot of negativity. There's a lot of negative narrative around masculinity. And interestingly, when I was writing my dissertation, that phrase toxic masculinity kept coming up over and over again.

[00:07:08] You know, and if you front load the word masculinity with the word toxic, what message is that drip feeding? Oh, boys, there's this message that it's not OK to be masculine. So where does that leave us?

[00:07:25] You know, where does that leave our boys and our men in today's society? So what does it mean to be? And I quite often I do quite a lot of work with apprentices coming into male industries, so construction apprentices, utilities apprentices, and we quite often have that discussion.

[00:07:42] And it's quite a contentious question really, but I quite often say to them, OK, tell me what it means to be a real man. And it's a really interesting question. There's still quite a lot of what you would probably call

[00:07:54] quite traditional male views about being providers and breadwinners and how it's not OK to show vulnerability. And there's still this idea of strength. But, you know, alongside of that, there is this narrative, isn't there? This message that that when we talk about men,

[00:08:12] we're talking in very negative terms. Potentially about a very few men. So interestingly, Volking, you were measuring the hashtag men too. And, you know, I wonder whether we are, we're almost termishing all boys and all men with the actions of a few.

[00:08:34] Thanks for that. There's a lot in there. I tried to structure it in my head a little bit where we put a star. If you start with the hashtag, the way I interpret it, the hashtag,

[00:08:45] it's kind of like instead of me too, you know, the movement for females. It's more men too, right? We have a voice as well. But that's how I interpret it. I almost find it a good way, you know, obviously,

[00:09:04] you know, given giving our discussion, we meant the only to start as a discussion where we obviously had a chat before. And maybe we need to start somewhere else because say. I'm thinking in terms of, you know, you mentioned construction work.

[00:09:17] And we had someone from the construction industry on the on the pot before talking about suicide. And obviously it's an industry which, you know, is very prone to that. I mean, two every day is a lot. But what what what drives these people to commit suicide?

[00:09:37] I'm not allowed to say that, right? It's the wrong term. And maybe I just did that deliberately, of course. Just because I was, you know, learning English as a foreign language. Right. That's my excuse. But, you know, I was taught it's commit suicide, but it's not anymore.

[00:09:53] Right. You're not you're not allowed to say that anymore. So what's what's the what's the right term of saying it? Yeah, the reason we don't use the term and commit any longer is that then actually it harks back to a time when suicide was a crime.

[00:10:07] And so it was a crime right up until 1961 to take your own life. And so that's where that that term so you would commit suicide in the same way as you would commit merger or commit fraud. And the coroner every time there's a suicide, there's an investigation

[00:10:21] buying the police in the coroner's court. And that used to come under the criminal jurisdiction. So the language was very much about, you know, had to foreign, I had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that somebody intended to take their own life.

[00:10:34] So very similar language team would use if you were somebody was being charged with with murder, for example. In 2018, the balance of the burden of proof was lifted. And the coroner now only has to prove on the balance of probability that somebody intended to take their own life.

[00:10:51] So so it's outdated language. It also has very negative connotations, doesn't it? If you if you think about it being associated with with a criminal act. The other thing that comes up when you hear the word commit as well is to commit sin.

[00:11:07] And we know, you know, certainly in with some faiths to commit suicide, if you like, is the would be the number one is the mortal sin. So again, that association with that word commit. So we tend to we tend to talk about people dying by suicide,

[00:11:23] people taking their own life rather than using that word. Thanks for clarifying that because I in my ethics paper was put up on that by by by writing committing. And I actually voted down on my law with saying I need to bring that up

[00:11:37] because, you know, it's just a common phrase. Hello, it's Volker here. I hope you enjoy this episode. You might not realize that I have been coaching for almost a decade through both third parties and private clients. During the time I've worked with brands such as General Electric,

[00:11:57] Imperial Brands, DHL and Pepsi. However, this year, I'm putting a big emphasis on growing my private coaching practice, improving lights of middle aged men in leadership positions. So if you hit midlife transition point and you might be a bit stuck

[00:12:14] or looking to improve your work life balance, your career or productivity, you want to build a new habit where you just want to become a better version of yourself. Please hit me up. You can reach me on Volker.natus. That's Volker at OBNAT.US

[00:12:33] or LinkedIn, whatever is easiest. Thanks and no back to the episode. But what is the reason for so many people in the construction industry to take their own lives? It's a really complex phenomenon. If you think about, you know, men in general,

[00:12:54] there are a number of things that come into play here. Some of them potentially more myths than reality. But, you know, so the way we socialize boys potentially there is certainly within the construction sites that I'm familiar with a real banter culture. And I'm not against banter.

[00:13:15] You know, don't get me wrong. I would hate to see banter disappear from a construction site because just as human beings, that's how we build relationships. And probably one of the most difficult things where we talk about male suicide actually is that we know

[00:13:31] that men tend to have less deep relationships with other men than maybe women do with other women. So the environment to have those really difficult conversations potentially isn't there. So I wouldn't want to take away, ever take away anything

[00:13:47] that creates relationship and connection between guys on a site. And quite often it's, you know, how they get through the day is, you know, that ribbing and that they do with each other in the banter. But if you're not in a very good place, sometimes

[00:14:00] that banter can sort of tip over and almost tip over into bullying. We never know how when, you know, what we say is going to be received by somebody. We know ourselves, don't we, that somebody could say something

[00:14:14] to us one day and if we're in a good mood, it can wash over us. But the next day, if something's happened to you or you're having a particularly hard time, that will hit a little bit harder. And so we know that culture doesn't always isn't always helpful.

[00:14:30] But, you know, there's things like that the hours that these guys work are really long. Quite often they work away from home a lot of the time. So they're away from their families for extended period. Quite often, you know, actually living away from home during the week

[00:14:45] in sort of bed sits and and, you know, B&Bs. There tends to be quite an alcohol culture. And as well, if you look at the relationship between alcohol and suicide, there's quite a significant link there.

[00:14:58] But that, you know, we could dig into that even a bit more. Couldn't you say, well, why is there an alcohol culture? You know, alcohol and other substances are quite of our means of dealing with distress, aren't they?

[00:15:09] It's a way of dealing with pain quite often or numbing. I've seen something I don't want to have to feel. So so there's an alcohol culture. We also know that if you look, if you dig into the suicide statistics, what you'll find is that the majority of male

[00:15:25] suicides in the construction industry tend to happen at the level of the lowest skill as well. So they're the low skilled workers where quite often the work is very temporary, work from sort of like job to job are very disposable,

[00:15:41] if you like, on a site in terms of the work that they do. Also higher rates in the trades, particularly self-employed tradies. And again, you know, the nature of that work is quite impermanent. And you know, you're always looking ahead for where's the next job coming from.

[00:15:59] They're at the mercy of weather quite often. And we know over recent years there's been issues with supply chain and, you know, following sort of Covid and Brexit and very often working to ruin like once in really small margins. So a lot of stress.

[00:16:16] And a lot of the independent guys, when you talk to them about their biggest sources of stress, it will be getting paid. So we have an issue within that industry as well. People getting paid on time and, you know, they've got quite

[00:16:30] often the smaller construction companies or the smaller trades, but people that work for them who have families and, you know, they feel responsible for those people. They need to pay their wages, but actually they're waiting three, sometimes six months to get paid for the jobs that

[00:16:47] they're doing. So it's a huge cash flow problem. You know, these things all build up, don't they? Suicide is a never a single factor thing. Or very rarely I say never. Obviously we can have a knee jerk reaction to something major that happens in our lives.

[00:17:06] Generally speaking, it's a buildup of different things. So if somebody has their relationship has broken down, particularly the other thing with men that we see as quite a big issue is when relationships break down, our family courts are still very heavily weighted

[00:17:27] towards women. And so custody of children quite often be heavily weighted towards women. And men have to go through that sort of custody battle if you like through the courts just to be able to see their children quite often.

[00:17:42] And that can be devastating for a lot of men. So they'll only do they have a relationship breakdown, but they lose contact with their children quite often. What was really interesting, I went to a National Suicide Prevention Alliance conference back in January.

[00:17:58] There was a guy, one of the keynote speakers, who runs a charity called Dad's Unlimited and they basically support men in this sort of situation. So men who lost touch maybe with their children and are going through the courts to try and get access to their children.

[00:18:17] That's how the charity started out actually. And this guy himself was a barrister and had a very similar experience. And this is why he started the charity in the first place. But what he said resonated with me and I hadn't really thought about it before.

[00:18:33] He was saying that, you know, if we think about poor mental health, men's mental health, if you are in a situation where your relationship has broken down, you're struggling to get access to your children, maybe you're in financial difficulty. You know, because of that, you think about relationship

[00:18:50] breakdowns quite often. That means that men are still paying for their children, but they've also been having to rent somewhere to live, maybe so financially in a difficult place. And our mental health absolutely starts to be impacted by that. So then maybe, you know, if I may find

[00:19:10] drinking or using other substances as a way of dealing with that emotion in distress, so we add that into the mix. And, you know, we talk a lot about when men are in distress. The big message is always reach out for help.

[00:19:26] You know, if you're struggling, reach out for help. But what I was hearing that day was that a lot of these men are really worried about reaching out for help. Because if I admit that I'm struggling with my mental health,

[00:19:40] if I end up under the, you know, the support of the GP or a mental health professional, when it comes to that hearing in the family court, it's not going to be weaponised and used against me. And I've never really thought about that before.

[00:19:56] But so there's fear there, that there are barriers to help seeking that wouldn't necessarily be things that we would think about. You know, it's not just that men don't talk because actually men do talk. If you create the right environments that feel safe,

[00:20:11] when men feel supported and they know that they are going to get the help that is going to help them, men do open up and they do talk. But there are rather barriers. So it may be that, you know, if I'm labelled with

[00:20:24] depression or anxiety, that if my partner has a good barrister, that's going to be used against me in a family court. And so I'm too afraid to do that. I'm too afraid to seek that help. And that's something I've never really considered before.

[00:20:41] But, you know, that's just one example, you know, why people don't don't reach out for help. There was a study done actually in Manchester University in 2021 where they were looking at the suicides in middle aged men. So the highest rates of suicides are in middle aged men.

[00:20:59] And they were looking at the 12 month period in 2017 of the suicides that had happened in that age range. And what they discovered was is that I think it was something ridiculous, like 91 percent of those men had reached out, had been in touch with a front line service

[00:21:18] in the three months before their death. Now, whether that was a G-Clee, so some of it was GP, some of it was mental health professionals, some of it would have been, you know, work and the Department of Work and Pensions. So, you know, frontline services

[00:21:32] the men were seeking help. So that begs the question then, doesn't it? If those men then went on to, you know, to take their own life, what happened there? They obviously didn't get the help that they needed. So why was that?

[00:21:45] So there's a number of different reasons for that. It may be that if you think about if you were going to go to a GP, what would you go with? Would you feel comfortable and confident enough to actually tell your GP that you're having thoughts of suicide?

[00:21:59] You're probably going to go and say, I'm not sleeping or, you know, I've got some physical illness going on. Now, if your GP doesn't ask you the right questions, we're not going to pick up on that.

[00:22:11] And also what we know is that men tend to more than women. And I know I'm talking in huge stereotypes here, but the statistics do bear this out that men generally don't go to a GP as early for things as women do.

[00:22:27] So it may be that men are already in that crisis phase when they try and access support. But are we asking the right questions? You know, when men are, you know, presenting in those frontline services. The other interesting thing about this is,

[00:22:45] which you might find really shocking is that if you think about the medical profession, our GPs, you know, our doctors in hospitals, when they do their training, there is a number of mandatory rotations that they do, obviously to learn to be doctors and GPs.

[00:23:04] Mental health forms are very, very small part of that. So they don't have an awful lot of training in mental health and suicide prevention is not mandatory. Our medical professionals are not trained in suicide prevention. And to me, that is crazy. That is absolutely crazy.

[00:23:27] The medical profession is not trained in suicide prevention because the first thing we always say is, you know, go and see the GP, you're going to talk to somebody and then they turn up at a GP surgery and then the person that they're talking to

[00:23:41] is not asking the right questions, doesn't have the skills to be able to support the person. And if you don't get a good response the first time you go, you are not going to go back. If you go to the GP surgery and you have a conversation

[00:23:55] and you don't feel like you're being heard or somebody is not creating a safe enough space for you to feel a bit vulnerable, you know, to be able to create no safe enough space for you to be a little bit vulnerable,

[00:24:09] then you're not going to necessarily say what you need to say. And so are we asking the right questions? That's the first thing. If we are asking the right questions, is the support that we have available, is it for purpose? And that's the other question,

[00:24:26] particularly with when you look at the mental health support that we have available, the vast majority of mental health support is designed with women in mind. If you look at things like therapy, let's just take depression as an example. If you look at the nice guidelines around depression,

[00:24:46] the recommended treatment is adidipresence and some form of talking therapy. But if you look at the research, the academic research around this, talking therapy isn't being shown to be very effective for men. So are we offering men the right sort of support

[00:25:06] even if we are asking them the right questions? So there's a not going against this here, isn't there? So it's not that men don't seek help. It's not that if we provide the right sort of support that men don't find a way through their crisis.

[00:25:22] It's just that I don't think we are, I don't think we're asking the right questions. I don't think we're set up in the right way to support men. And there are some pockets of fantastic work going on across the UK, things like men's sheds, for example.

[00:25:38] Men supporting other men, but they tend to be very practical solutions. And again, if you look at the psychology behind this, we tend to find that men are very solution-focused, very practical solutions. And you could always say that suicide is the ultimate solution, isn't it?

[00:25:58] If you've got all of these things going on that suicide is your ultimate solution. So actually, finding therapeutic support for men quite often is about those practical solutions and coming at those conversations from a more indirect route. So creating spaces where men can meet together

[00:26:19] in a more informal way to have those conversations than sending a man to therapy. And there are some great examples of where this is working. There's a guy called Steve Kerslake who runs a charity in the construction sector called Construction Sport.

[00:26:36] And Steve had his own experience, actually, of PTSD, but he, forgive me, Steve, if this is wrong, but I think he started a set up a walk one day, well, I think it was to raise money for a cause around what he'd been experiencing.

[00:26:53] And what he found was is that on this walk, lots of men joined him, and the conversations that happened on that walk were amazing. And he was like, I've hit on something here. There's something about men coming together. And he was looking at things like the fire service

[00:27:12] and the police and how they have their own football teams and rugby teams. And so what he's doing now is encouraging organizations within the construction industry to develop sports teams and to put on activities and stuff where guys can come together in more informal settings

[00:27:33] to build those relationships, to be able to have those difficult conversations that we've been talking about. So it's very similar to the men's shits, where men will come together in full setting, practical things that they're doing together, but actually what we're doing is building relationship

[00:27:50] with each other so that they can have those conversations. Man Up, Man Down is sponsored by Well Doing. There's someone who has seen a counselor for a number of years, I think their approach is great. They want you to find the mental health professional

[00:28:03] who is right for you. You can fill to your search to highlight therapists with expertise where you need it or you can pay to use their personalized matching service. The people who run Well Doing are experts in mental wellbeing and they also have loads of posts

[00:28:16] and interviews to keep your mental health in good shape. Take a look at welldoing.org. Again, there's a lot in there. I mean we had someone, Charlie Bethel, I think? Yeah, the CEO of UK Men's Shits actually on the podcast in season one, I think it was.

[00:28:34] And I think it's a great initiative, right? Because you say, men are solution focused and you put them all in a room and say go and talk. Then they don't talk but you put a lawnmower in the middle of the room and say, the lawnmower's broken.

[00:28:49] I mean that's how he phrased it. He says people just start talking while it's fixing the lawnmower, of course. And that's how we work. And there's another group. We had Dan Flanagan on podcast and Dead Lasol which is more of a local group in the southeast

[00:29:04] and he provides, for say, and David correct me, essentially for single men, but men with children, parents. I guess dads that feel isolated, like if they're not there for the school pick up so they don't get to form social groups.

[00:29:27] But yeah, I mean, and I think it is single dads. But they also arrange sort of social events for the bad. Yeah, as well. So it's as much as play dates, if I say on a Saturday for single dads to support them,

[00:29:42] it is also getting them socially dads together and talk about a topic and everyone gets there. So I've been to one or two of those sessions. You know, there's no ambiguity. So it's not like you go to networking event or you go to a formal event.

[00:29:57] They go like, oh, what are all these people doing here? I wonder what they are. It's like you're one of many and you're just so welcomed and it's very open and he's holding the space for those dads really, really well.

[00:30:11] So there are groups like that, which is fantastic, of course. And I don't know, David, do you have any immediate questions because I was trying to piece it all together. Oh, I mean, there's lots there. I've been ready with... You gave me a platform, didn't you? Yeah.

[00:30:29] This topic is so huge and it's so complex that once you start digging into it, there's just so much. There's so much you can talk about. I mean, I... You know, as I say, I'm a copywriter and I did actually do a psychology A level.

[00:30:46] Yeah, you know, sort of what you said there about the whole... Well, you know, so the psychology of words is kind of what my... How I earned my bread. And yeah, I just never thought of that thing of the only time you hear the word basculinity

[00:31:05] is toxic masculinity. Yeah, so... I mean, the other thing that I sort of picked up on about what you were saying about construction and trades, I mean, I don't wanna drop any of my friends in it, but I've got a friend who works for a utility provider

[00:31:23] and basically he's got injured playing football and he's like, I can't tell them but I did it playing football because I won't get paid. And you know, he's then ended up going to work with sort of quite serious injuries, I'm thinking.

[00:31:38] But if you've got to do that for physical injuries, then yeah, you're not gonna... You're never gonna talk about your mental health, are you? Yeah, and I mean, sort of talking about seeing a GP. I mean, if you don't phone up at 8.30 on the night,

[00:31:51] you don't get an appointment. And again, it's like, well, these guys, when are they gonna find time when they're on a building site at 8? How are they gonna find time to phone a GP? Yeah, and also what you were sort of saying

[00:32:05] about living in bedsits and then alcohol. And I'm like, well, you'd probably finish work. You're like, I don't wanna sit in my bed set. So I'll spend that time in the pub till it's time to go to bed. So yeah, and then you think,

[00:32:20] well actually if you get into the habit of doing that, then you go home and it must be hard to break out of that habit. Then your wife's like, oh, you know, you're just in the pub. So you can sort of see that it's a perfect storm.

[00:32:34] But yeah, I mean, and the other thing, you sort of said about there, there is these great pockets and it is pockets. And we're fortunate enough to find out more and more of them. And I think you wrote down a few more as we were talking, Volker.

[00:32:53] I did, yeah. Yeah, recently, you know, and I saw it on LinkedIn or you know, I can't remember where I saw it, but it was an advert for a government czar of either men's health or men's mental health. I think it was men's health because,

[00:33:10] so yeah, an even bigger remit and basically it's one day a month. And you know, you're just like, the government is not taking this seriously if they're committing one day a month. And it gave the payment for that, day rate of about 300 pounds.

[00:33:29] That's how much they care about the mental health or men's health. And I mean, I'm going on around now. And the final point, you know, I think is with women because they are constantly going to the doctors to get, check up especially if you have children.

[00:33:48] So that, and sort of I guess, sort of with breast cancer, well, you know, almost so naturally they're more inclined to get breast checked than we are to get our bollocks checked. Which we should by the way, that's a completely different topic, but we should.

[00:34:07] Well, I'm not checking one right now for, but please. Yeah, sorry. I mean, so yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree with everything you said on it. You know, it's really interesting on that point that, because if you think about the narrative, the narratives,

[00:34:28] and I have to admit that when you asked me to do this and I thought about, you know, what we're going to talk about and Volker and I talked about the title, the Billification of Men, didn't we? Yeah. And I started to think about

[00:34:43] because I've become quite an ally, if you like, for men over the last few years. And I think one of almost my biggest fear was that if I start talking about men and men's issues, that it's going to upset almost the feminist movement.

[00:35:01] Because if you think about the last decade, it's been a real and understandably a real drive for increasing equality for women. And absolutely that needed to happen. And I'm not saying that they weren't some huge issues, but I think I do wonder whether that narrative

[00:35:20] has gone too far the other way. But it's almost like anybody that's standing up at the moment to question that is being shot down in flames. And I'd be reading a few things where there's a lot of men that won't even go there.

[00:35:35] You know, it's just like it's too hot a topic to talk about because they're setting themselves up basically for the backlash. And there was part of me thinking, if I start talking about this from a male perspective,

[00:35:49] am I going to be setting myself up for that backlash from women? But I don't think it's an either-or situation. I don't think that we can have equality for women, but not to the detriment of men. I think that there needs to be both

[00:36:10] in exactly what you were saying, David, that we have now got a Minister for Women's Health. There's been a lot of focus on women's mental health, the menopause, if you think about what's happened over the last few years. And I think people like Devina McCall

[00:36:26] have been very instrumental in that. There's been a lot of focus on women's health. There's a Minister for Women's Health. And actually she was at the National Suicide Prevention conference in January. But there's no Minister for Men's Health. And actually, if you look at...

[00:36:43] Society talks about male privilege a lot and the patriarchy, you hear that word, the patriarchy. And men are seen as being privileged. But if you look at the stats, they don't bear that out. Actually, men are disadvantaged in lots and lots of different areas of life.

[00:37:00] So if you think about boys, they lag behind girls at every stage of education. Boys are much more likely to be excluded from school than girls. Our prison populations are made up, majority of men. Our rustleapers are 83% male. Prison population, 96% of the prison population are male.

[00:37:19] If you look at health inequality, men die earlier. Men die from, as you were just saying, David, male illnesses and diseases, there is no Minister for Men's Health. So why? Why is there no Minister for Men's Health? Why are men getting left behind here?

[00:37:36] From what you just said, there's a great book, which I'm sure you would have read it. Got it on my bed itself. Of Boys and Men, which I read and why the modern male is struggling, why it matters and what to do about it.

[00:37:48] But it's their US focus, as you would know. Yes, it is. Read it. What I like about it, it's not just the book saying, oh, men are disadvantaged. It brings in the stats, right? And particularly education, as you mentioned, university education in the States,

[00:38:05] and in particular for people of color and Hispanics, right? So ethnic minorities in the US. And it's just such a good book to read, but then it kind of like, it brings it home that we need to do something. But as you say, right?

[00:38:19] If we look at the feminist movement, if you bring in a men movement, is that the right way forward? Is that discriminating against females? Is that just putting, I mean, it's a scale. We talked about that previously, right? It's a scale tipping the wrong point.

[00:38:37] Are we, if I say, thanks to the Me Too movement, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying this is a bad movement by all means. And women have been disadvantaged for hundreds of years, there's no doubt about that. But are we now almost focusing too much on that

[00:38:56] and not focusing on men at all? And when will the pendulum swing the other way again? I don't know. There's a stats you mentioned, I mean, from prison to, I mean, suicide for me is the biggest one, right? And we always say here on the podcast,

[00:39:12] even as I say, if you can prevent one suicide through sharing things like what we talked about today, then our job is done. If you can save one life. And to a day in the, just in the construction industry alone, it's just too many,

[00:39:31] too a year too many. No, no one has to do that. What's interesting about the prison population? And again, this, if you think about the narrative around this, you may have heard of, I can't remember what they called it now,

[00:39:46] there was a court case where they were looking at, is there a gene that basically makes you a murderer? And so they were looking at the new, answered that. And there's a narrative that males are more prone to aggression and violence.

[00:40:04] And, you know, this is why our prison population is predominantly male, but there's a professor, a lady called Professor Naomi Murphy who's worked with the prison population for years. And she has highlighted some interesting statistics that if you look at the prison population actually,

[00:40:24] the majority of the guys in that population have a trauma background. You know, and we talk about, you know, 73% of that prison population, they did a survey I think in 2021, 73% of that prison population had experienced abuse. 81% had been physically or emotionally neglected, 66% of them had been sexually abused,

[00:40:47] 44% have witnessed domestic violence, 53% of them have spent time in care. So these are traumatized young men. I mean, we interviewed an amazing organization called a Band of Brothers. And I mean, they started sort of working in prisons to tackle mental health. I mean, again, it's like, you know,

[00:41:13] I sort of the thing that I bang on about is I wonder how many undiagnosed cases of neurodiversity there are in prison. Oh, absolutely. You know, impulse control. There's definitely something about emotion regulation because if you think what she was also saying is, and I know, you know,

[00:41:31] as I'm hearing these words coming out of my mouth, I'm hearing some of the negative comments that potentially are gonna come back from this, but you cannot deny the statistics here that a lot of these guys are also born to maybe single mothers who themselves have a history

[00:41:48] of abuse or have grown up in the care system themselves and maybe haven't had the emotional capacity to be able to raise their children and to teach them emotion, how to regulate emotion. We're not saying that, you know, the whole of the prison population is about,

[00:42:06] you know, men not being able to regulate emotion because it's not what we're saying at all. But trauma does play a part here. And, you know, if you think about what we're saying about the fact that boys lag behind girls through schools,

[00:42:19] our education system is not set up for boys. You know, we're talking about our therapy and mental health system not being set up for boys. Our education system is not set up for boys either. And the book that you mentioned there, Volcker with Richard Reeves,

[00:42:34] he talks about that as well. And I think in his book, he talks about brain development. And we know that the boys and girls' brains develop at different rates. And actually, the brain development of boys is their literacy and language skills develop later.

[00:42:52] And we need literacy and language for all of our other subjects as well. So, you know, to be able to do maths and engineering and IT. So the brain just develops later. And I think it might even have been Richard that suggested that one way

[00:43:04] that you could help boys in education is that they actually start school a year later than girls because it takes, you know, it takes longer for the brain to develop. And if we look at adolescence, we know that, you know, the female brain and matures generally speaking,

[00:43:20] matures quicker than the male brain. And so adolescence is a really tricky time for boys as well. But our education assistants are not set up. They're not designed to appeal to boys. We talked about boys being quite solution focused, didn't we, earlier on?

[00:43:36] And I was reading something which I found really, it resonated with me because this was my son. And one of the guys with, it's an all parliamentary, all party parliamentary group that's looking into boys and men at the moment. I don't know if you've seen the,

[00:43:51] there's a paper that's come out where they consulted with lots of different experts and have put some recommendations together. And one of the experts was talking about boys, boys motivation in school. And he was saying that boys motivation in school comes from understanding the tangible benefits

[00:44:08] and the value of what they need to study. And this put me in mind of my son because my son Louis, he's really bright, but at school was very pragmatic. So the subjects that he didn't see the point in, it's just like, you know,

[00:44:26] I don't wanna put the effort into that because I can't see the point of that. When he finished school and he wanted to go into electronic engineering, he didn't wanna go to university, but he realized that to get a job

[00:44:38] in the field that he wanted to work in, he needed a degree. So it was there, it was like, okay, I need to go to university. And it was that practical, in order to do this, I need to do this. And so it's, and I don't think we,

[00:44:50] you know, our education system isn't set up with that vocational sort of route in mind, is it that in order to do the jobs that you want to do, actually we need to be thinking about what skills we need. Well, yeah, we have come to the end

[00:45:05] and we do need to wrap up. Okay. Unfortunately, I think we've definitely got to get you on for another episode, Anita. But I mean that is just one of my main gripes, is like, I remember it was for, our parents' evening for my daughter,

[00:45:26] you know, I think the second year, but it was almost like talking about the importance of reading. And I'm thinking, well, if by the age of 13, they're not really into reading, you know, why not offer them more sort of manual, you know, like stripping an engine or,

[00:45:43] but you know, like others, why don't you start learning other skills rather than trying to push them into learning something that they, you know, don't want to, or, you know, their mind doesn't work that way. But anyway, sorry, as I say,

[00:45:58] we will definitely have to get you on for another episode. I think we touched on so many topics. I mean, I have all these notes here. And I'm thinking we can go down a rabbit hole and everywhere. And I think if nothing else,

[00:46:10] what I take from this episode so far, and that's why I think I echo what David is saying, right? So much we need to be doing and you know, maybe we can go deeper in the second episode at some point.

[00:46:21] But if our listeners do want to find out more about the work he do, how do they find out these? So I run a training company called Blossom. Blossom training.org is my website. I help organisations to develop their mental strategies,

[00:46:38] basically, but that also involves doing lots of sort of line manager training, general awareness sort of work, looking at the culture of a workplace and thinking about how we're looking after people within those workplaces. So then, yeah, do talks and things like this.

[00:46:53] Well, thanks very much for your time. It's just been fascinating. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Feel free to reach out to Folker or David via our website, www.manupdown.com or podcast at manupdown.com

[00:47:12] with any feedback or to let us know what topics you'd like us to cover in the future. Hear you again soon.