Translator: Louise-Marie Six Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
This morning, I started my day by waking up,
and I'm actually pretty proud of that.
I mean, apart from the fact that my alarm went off at 5:15 this morning,
and it's been a crazy, hectic day,
it's pretty good to be here.
And it's pretty great to be here at TEDx.
And the reason that I'm somewhat proud
of that seemingly insignificant achievement of waking up,
is that this morning, for five Aussie men, that wasn't the case.
They're not here today and they don't know that any of this is going on,
because yesterday, they reached a point in their life
where they believed it was a better option for them to kill themselves
than to wake up today.
Another five Aussie men will do the same today,
and tomorrow, and the day after that,
and the day after that.
And before this year is out,
just under 2,000 Aussie men will have suicided.
If we expand that out to a global context, that's around 700,000 men.
And by this point, we can only represent each man
by a single individual pale pixel.
For each completed suicide, there is then another 20 suicide attempts.
I'd show you that, but I'd need another seven HD slides worth of pixels.
It's literally an epidemic.
At a rate higher than leukemia, than even war,
men are killing themselves.
If you're a guy in this room between the ages of 14 and 44,
the biggest threat to your life right now, is actually yourself.
But, I don't want to get too bogged down in statistics.
Instead, I want to talk about what each and every single one of us can do
to help reduce the rate of suicide.
But in order to do that, we need to first understand a little bit of common context,
a little bit of common understanding, around what it is we mean
when we talk about men, mental health, and suicide.
And those ground rules are preempted by a small disclaimer.
And that disclaimer is that suicide also affects women.
Despite the fact that men complete suicide at a rate five times that of women,
women attempt suicide at just as high a rate as men.
But as someone who works specifically in men's mental health,
I'm going to leave that conversation
for someone who is far more capable at that conversation.
The first ground rule we need to understand about mental health,
is that mental health exists across a spectrum.
Now, that might sound like a really obvious things to say.
Yet often, when conversation about mental health or mental illness comes up,
that spectrum becomes really narrow.
When we talk about physical health,
we understand that, at one end of the spectrum,
we have something as small and insignificant as a paper cut,
- and that's not to, in any way, diminish the bizarre agony that is a paper cut -
right up to the other end of really serious terminal illnesses like cancer.
The same spectrum, and just as wide a spectrum,
exists for mental health too.
At one end, we have really serious mental illnesses,
like psychopathy and severe clinical depression,
but at the other end, we have things that aren't mental illnesses,
that are just poor mental health.
It might be a tough day, you might be going through
a bit of a rough patch, it might be a breakup.
When it comes to physical health, we know that if we get a scratch,
we put some Betadine and a Band-Aid on it,
to make sure that minor thing doesn't become something worse.
And the same thing needs to happen with mental health.
So, if someone is going through a bit of a rough patch,
we need to take action and make sure that support is there,
to make sure that that seemingly insignificant moment in their life
doesn't become something more serious.
The second ground rule is that suicide is a behaviour.
In and of itself, suicide is not a mental illness.
Rather, it can be the result of a mental illness
or significantly poor mental health.
For the vast majority of people, suicide is when their inbuilt coping mechanisms
are outweighed by their current circumstances.
And although it is true that for a really small minority of people,
thoughts of suicidality can be ongoing, or even life-long challenges,
for the vast, vast, vast majority of people,
thoughts of suicide are really temporary.
This is backed up by a study that came out of the US, by Doctor Richard Seiden,
which studied 515 people
who were restrained whilst attempting suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge.
And this was a really longitudinal study.
And what they found was that years and years and years later,
of those 515 people who were restrained,
94% were still alive or had died from natural causes.
94%.
So, although 6% is still far too high,
it suggests that, again, with the right intervention,
with the right support,
we can significantly reduce the rate of suicides.
And what's interesting to note too, of that 6% who did go on to suicide,
is that a third of those suicided within the first six months
of the initial attempt.
The third ground rule is that men are emotionally complex.
I'm sure we've all seen on our social media feeds, on Facebook and Twitter,
study after study that say
that women are more emotionally intelligent that men,
and that they express themselves in more emotional terms than men.
So you'd be forgiven for thinking that, as men,
we're naturally emotionally stunted.
But what's interesting about these studies when you look at them closer,
is that these studies often about
how it is that men express themselves outwardly.
They don't actually look at what it is that men are feeling inwardly.
Back in 2014, myself and my team at Spur Projects,
we ran a project called "How is Australia feeling?"
It was an app for smart devices,
and we encouraged people across Australia to take part and log their emotions.
We asked them to tell us what emotion they were feeling
at any given point in time,
at what intensity that emotion was being felt,
and what they were doing at that time.
And again, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the results between men and women
would be vastly different. That's what we expected as well.
I should also point out, too,
that in terms of men potentially being more emotionally stunted,
there is actually a term that's been coined:
"normative male alexithymia",
which literally means "without words for emotions".
Anyway, getting back to the data.
This here is the data from women.
This is the average intensities felt by women.
At one end, zero is that a particular emotion was felt really weakly,
and up the other end, 100 meant that that emotion was being intensely felt.
Here is the results of men.
We can then break that data down into the individual emotions as well.
Here, we have the six base emotions of the app.
Again, here is the results from women.
And here is the results of men.
Almost identical.
So, we're now at a point when we understand
that men have all the feels like women do.
(Laughter)
It's been suggested that potentially
we're not hardwired to express ourselves at the same emotional level as women.
But I think there's also something else really major at play.
These things.
[Man up. Don't be a girl. Grow some balls.]
A lot of people in the audience know.
We live in a society where, from the youngest age,
we're taught, almost exclusively,
that our worth as a human being, as a male,
is linked, inextricably, to our perceived masculinity.
And that if we want to be a real man,
we have to conform to a really narrow definition of what it is to be a man.
And if you don't believe that,
these are products that are literally on sale today.
And if you're wondering, the logo for the Brosé
- that is, Rosé for men -
is literally a fist, punching through the wine bottle.
(Laughter)
So, I guess it leads to this point in our society, where, as men,
we're allowed to dip our toes into the warm pool of femininity,
but only if it's accompanied by enough masculine energy to counteract it.
And so, that brings us to our two challenges that I have for you today.
The first one is to help undefine masculinity.
This isn't about redefining masculinity.
This isn't about saying that, okay,
you no longer need a beard and to chop wood to be classed as a man,
but you now have to do something else.
No, it's about challenging yourself,
and challenging other people when they try to define masculinity.
For example, if you have a mate who says: "Oh, I'm off to broga",
you can say: "No, you're going to yoga, and that's fine."
Or, if you have a friend who accidently blurts out
that their favourite movie is 'Notting Hill',
then you can pull yourself back and go:
well, actually, no, I don't need to laugh and mock them because it doesn't fit
into this little box of preticked movies that men are allowed to watch.
No, instead you mock him because that movie is just horrible.
(Laughter)
And I think this is summed up best by my pseudo childhood mother,
Noni Hazlehurst, from Play School, who once said:
"What would it mean if we could empower women and mend the broken hearts of men?"
And the reason why undefining masculinity in general context is so important,
is that we can't possibly hope to get men to talk about
their feelings and their emotions purely in a mental health context,
if all those other barriers and constructs remain.
So, by breaking down general constructs of masculinity,
we're then able to also help those constructs
that stop men from help-seeking behaviour.
The second challenge I have for you
- and this is a really, really simple one -
is to spend some time with your friends and family.
If we jump back to the data from "How is Australia feeling?",
these are the results of emotions logged when people were socialising,
when people were speding time with their friends and family.
And what you'll notice, by a really large margin,
the most commonly felt emotions were peacefulness and happiness.
So the simple act of hanging out with your friends and family
is really important.
But it's also important, too, for you to share information about yourself,
to share how you're feeling, potentially your emotional vulnerabilities.
Because we know from the data that if people are in environments
where other people are sharing how they're feeling,
the other people in those environments are more likely to share as well.
It's important to remember though, that having a conversation
isn't some sort of emotional side alley slot machine
where you can pop in an emotion or a vulnerability
and expect one in return.
But, by laying a foundation of openness and honesty,
you're allowing the other person to do the same.
And so, that's it. They are my two challenges for you.
One: to help undefine masculinity.
And two: to take a mate out for a coffee.
So, although these two things are really, really small actions,
and they might seem really insignificant,
by doing these things, you're actually taking really big steps
to empower men to talk about their feelings
and to talk about their mental health.
And as I said at the start, there are five guys out there today
who are alive at this very second, their hearts are still beating,
and they won't be by this time tomorrow.
But the conversations we have today, the way we engage each other today,
the way we interact with people around us today
can literally change that.
Thank you.
(Applause)