Man Down
I said in my previous post about my experience with depression that I would be having some guest post from those more qualified than I in the realm of Mental Health, well here’s my mate Gemma Jennison, who has been doing some truly inspirational work with her Man Down Programme - Kaptin
Photo by Emily Clare Negus
When people ask me what The Man Down Programme (MDP) is I always find myself saying the same thing.
It has become something of a habit. But, recent events have allowed me to reflect on the resonance of my reply.
What is the MDP about? ‘It is a response’ I say.
A response to seeing my male friends struggle to find a safe place to declare their feelings; a response to seeing the ways that men feel confined to gendered stereotypes, sub-cultural, community narratives that have normalised men ‘manning up’; that have told men that having feelings outside of happy, angry or horny are not okay.
Men either have to bring home food or money. They have to be good at sex, they have to have that ‘big dick energy’ – you know, the energy all men have when they house a giant penis in their trousers and that makes them walk into a room with that confident sense of knowing.
The reductionist view of manhood defined by archaic notions of what it means to be a ‘real man’ has started to kill off men of working age.
When we consider the national statistics for suicide, the facts almost present themselves:
Around three-quarters of registered deaths in 2019 were among men (4,303 deaths), which follows a consistent trend back to the mid-1990s
The England and Wales male suicide rate of 16.9 deaths per 100,000 is the highest since 2000
As seen in previous years, the most common method of suicide in England and Wales was hanging, accounting for 61.7% of all suicides among males.
My position as a mental health nurse provided some windows of insight into other problematic issues about why men do not talk. The reasons are widely known in the world of mental health; they have been discussed in the 2018 review into the Mental Health Act and for many years before this. Mental health care provision is not meeting the needs of service users in terms of autonomy and rights - disconcertingly we are still operating within these following ratios:
Black people are 40% more likely to come into mental health services through the criminal justice system rather than a GP referral.
Black males are over-represented in locked/secure psychiatric services than their white counterparts.
Black people are statistically more likely to be detained under the emergency treatment section ‘136’ of the Mental Health Act (1983) - this means that a person is in a public space acting ‘bizarrely’. (Police can detain a person as they have suspicions that they may be in mental distress and could be a risk to themselves of others.)
Research points out that Black males are statistically less likely to engage with mental health services, less likely to talk about their mental health and much less likely to ask for help.
In 2015 The Department of Health and Social Care published a report stating that Black African/Caribbean/Asian/Pakistani/Indian/other people disclosed that they had been physically restrained and secluded more often than their white counterparts.
So here we are, in 2021 still having discussion on race in health care. Here we are in 2021 defending a person’s right to be Black, and here we are in 2021 having a discussion on why men do not talk.
In May 2019 my life as I knew it changed forever. Two of my male friends attempted to take their own lives. Neither of these men were ‘white’. Both men shared a commonality in both being ‘othered’ by labels such as ‘BAME’ a term which continues to other people. Both were/are in music.
Both survived. One of these men lived the remainder of his life in brain injury units. In November 2020 he eventually lost his life. This has had a profound impact and changed the way I, personally, see my role as a nurse.
Having been a hip hop promoter since I was 16, I have been part of a culture that creates stories of masculinity in a world of what we might call ‘posturing’. I started to research all of the subcultural discourses of masculinity in hip hop and music of Black origin. But there is a discussion to be had about the role of the ‘male’ in all genres of music, however this is my familiarity and a world I know.
Men, music and masculinity continue to be an area of research for me in my doctorate. This is not the space for this complex and nuanced discussion. (Essentially the issues around why Black men do not talk or engage in mental health services and music have some crossover and connecting the dots is a work in progress).
I started MDP in 2019 shortly after these men, my friends, made these decisions. So when I say it is a response – I mean it. Only now, after losing Martin do I realise the impetus to make change beyond Bristol, beyond my friends and beyond my city.
We started making a film in February 2020 – the premise of the film is to collect a set of stories from the men in the music industry. Not just artists but ALL men who work within the industries. The stories that come directly from these men are the foundations of the MDP – a programme of work that serves to have meaningful conversations with people on the barriers to men asking for help. It is about normalising human emotions, and not allowing ourselves to start labelling people under a diagnostic tool without due care and consideration. For example, performance anxiety is normal – but when we start to say ‘oh, he is anxious’, ‘he has anxiety’ we are removing the right to feel anxious/nervous. This then becomes the way we describe someone. Only yesterday a person messaged me and described a man by his diagnosis – ‘he is bi-polar’ rather than, ‘I know he has bi-polar’. To give further clarity in case you think I am a pedant (which I am), I took a patient from a psychiatric unit to a general hospital as he was physically ill and needed to be seen by a cardiac specialist. On arrival we were placed in an A&E cubicle, the curtain was closed the admitting nurse stated to the doctor, “doc, we have a new one to clerk, he’s a schizophrenic” – surprisingly both the male patient and I heard this behind what was apparently meant to be a soundproof curtain (sarcasm), and I questioned why he was described by his psychiatric diagnosis rather than a) his name, b) his cardiac issue and reason for attendance. It is dehumanising isn’t it?
I teach anywhere between 10 – 400 students in a field I feel fairly confident in. A field that I am told I am good at teaching. Yet, before I step out into that lecture theatre/classroom I feel nervous, sometime anxious, BUT you would not describe me as being an anxious person as a result of that, nor would you need to whip out your Mental Health First Aid tekkers and help me breathe through it, tell me to be ‘present’ and wrap me in a soft blanket. When we start to label people we stand a very good chance of creating narratives that do not necessarily tell the entire story.
It is important that we partake in understanding when to worry and when to escalate concerns around a person who is unwell/in distress and when we can say ‘that is totally normal’.
MDP is a response to reminding people of their own resilience in a world where you are being told that you need to be paying lots of money to take part in ‘wellbeing’ training because you are lacking resilience and everyone is depressed or anxious. This of course has nothing to do with the tax relief corporations get by having a wellbeing agenda in HR – nothing at all.
It is also a response to acknowledging that distress and trauma are common and they do not always manifest in depression and anxiety. They are complex and manifestations of both are ok.
So when I am asked ‘what is MDP?’ and I say ‘it is a response’ what I mean is – it is BIG. It is bigger than me, it is bigger than the men who have graciously shared their stories with me, it is a conversation around MEN, around humans and around genuine desire to make change.
MDP is training, it is workplace support, it is festival/gig aftercare, it is de-briefing, it is signposting.
It is about you.
You can find more information over at mandownprogramme.com
