Why too many men still choose silence...

A little over 10 years ago, I was grappling with a deep mental health challenge.

- Mental health campaigner and author GEORGE BELL

THE DARK SIDE Cultural 'norms' mean men keep their struggles locked away

By the time I'd actually gone to see the doctor to get diagnosed, I'd neglected things for long enough that I was facing daily suicidal thoughts too.There's a huge mental health part to this story: a lack of education, language and self-awareness, as well as my subsequent journey with recovery and therapy.

But there's another part to this story, a deeper part: my sense of masculinity at the time.

Because despite how desperately I was struggling and despite the fact that around me I had a loving family, a great group of friends and a supportive girlfriend, nobody knew what was happening. Why?

Because that’s what I believed men do, keep struggles locked away in a box called “silence”.

It's a crude equation, but I was willing to trade my own life in order to preserve this notion of masculine pride. To get better, to recover, and to still be here today, I had to not only work through the mental health side but I also had to almost entirely deconstruct and then rebuild my sense of what it means to be a man.

Let me be clear, this isn't about criticising or shutting down parts of masculinity that many men find so valuable. I believe we have gone too far in some discourse in recent years, too quick to label things toxic and shut down many parts of masculinity that men enjoy or aspire to have.

But I do also strongly believe that we have made masculinity too rigid and narrow, a very specific version of it being passed from generation to generation like a hand-me-down.

Among other things, this version of masculinity many of us have grown up with is one that champions emotional suppression, rather than expression.