Hope for Men

Men suffering abuse - we hear you, and we're here to listen to you.⁠ No one should have to live through abuse.⁠ 🖥️ jonathanshouse.org.uk⁠ ☎️0800 5244 202⁠ ⁠ #JHM #DomesticViolence #MaleVictims #MaleSurvivors #MenandBoys #IPV #DV #AbusedMen #AbusedMeninWales

‼️ We are losing a generation of young boys, it may not be popular to say, but boys and men need help...👇🏾 This month The Centre For Social Justice released a report that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. The report opens with the following statement: 🗣️ "At the Centre for Social Justice, we are asked: what is really going on in our homes and communities? We listen to those working on the frontline - the teachers, youth workers, charities, and parents who see, day in and day out, the struggles playing out in the lives of young people. And in recent years, they’ve been telling us the same thing: something is going on with our boys." 📉 "Boys and young men are in crisis. Whilst the last hundred years have been marked by great leaps forward in outcomes and rights for women, in this generation it is boys who are being left behind. And by some margin." 📉 "From the day they start primary school, to the day they leave higher education, the progress of boys lags behind girls. The proportion of young men failing to move from education into employment or training has been steadily growing for 30 years." 📉 "Since the pandemic, the number of males aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training has increased by a staggering 40% compared to just 7% for females." 📉 "For those young men who are in work, the much-vaunted gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now out-earned by their female peers, including among the university educated." 🧠 "Young men are increasingly drawn to right-wing political movements, whilst young women become ever more liberal and left-progressive." 🧔🏻♂️ "In an increasingly online existence, boys and girls no longer walk the same path from childhood to adulthood, with their interests, values and aims in life increasingly incompatible with each other. As Britain grapples with an epidemic of family breakdown, millions of boys are deprived of any positive model of manhood." 😔 1 in 5 young boys grow up in households without a dad, and young boys in farther-less homes struggle more with depression & anti-social behaviour than young girls. 💵 "For boys in Britain - especially those who are poor - the picture is an increasingly bleak one. We also highlight different outcomes across certain ethnic groups." 📢 The first step in addressing this is public conversation (which we haven’t had enough of), I hosted a discussion this week on my show about this topic which will be out soon. 📺 I'm hoping to produce a documentary about this for TV / streaming sites, alongside several friends of mine / former podcast guests. (if you can help, please get in touch) I'm extremely keen to hear what you're seeing & your thoughts? Teachers? Parents? Care workers? Therapists? What are you seeing? What can we do about it? __ Thank you to Tim Shipman, who's article in The Times brought this to my attention. Search "The Lost Boys, The Times" to read his full article (I've linked it below).

Real men cry, fyi.

When we think about men in health care the word 'delicate' probably isn't the first that comes to mind. But our new publication out this week doesn't put words in the mouths of men, it doesn't assume what they want or how they feel, instead we went out and asked them with openness and curiosity. I've spent much of my research career exploring men's experiences in mental health treatment, but this is the first paper in the field expanding into broader primary health care settings and looking at preferences and expectations when it comes to reaching, responding and retaining men in care. The thematic overlap is stark. It doesn't seem to matter what setting we're exploring or the group of men we talk to, the lessons they are teaching us are consistent and powerful and must now filter down into practice. What we heard was that: - As expected, men care deeply about their health and want to be seen as active, autonomous and thoughtful 'partners' in the healthcare setting. - The sex of the practitioner, despite endless commentary about the fact that men want more male HCPs, has never been a major concern for guys outside of some specific examples. - They just want to be spoken to like the complex human beings they are (and not pigeon-holed!), with banter, free-flowing questions and authentic friendly chat to get to know them. Take the time to build mutual trust and respect and it will pay dividends. - Most importantly in this paper, men told us they want to feel cared for. Our cultural obsession with men showing us 'vulnerability' does not seem translate to creating places and spaces where men themselves are shown true compassion and empathy that matches their sensitivities. This means empowering male patients to bring their whole selves into the room and actively explore all of their strengths and capacity through a biopsychosocial lens, not just mining for pathology. Lots more to come out of our Gender Responsive Healthcare team Movember to start to plug these gaps, transform how we approach practice with men and boys and ensure they feel the health system is built with them in mind. Shout out to the incredible team: Margaret McGee, Michelle Sheldrake, Simon Rice, Ruben Benakovic, Michael Wilson, Dr. Krista Fisher, Ben Rogers, Rachael Vogel

My new podcast with Susie B., leading male suicide researcher, is now live (in 4K!) 👇 https://lnkd.in/eA2VMgVv Suicide is the number one risk to a man’s life, each and every day, until he is about 50. Yet, it remains largely in the shadows of political and social advocacy, widely ignored by research, and left out of public debate; as an ugly, inconvenient blemish on the so-called “privileged” oppressor class of men. It’s not getting better. With the latest suicide rates in the UK, being the worst this century, with no signs of slowing down. The battle against this scourge, that robs so much from so many, is being fought, not in the halls of Westminster, or on the streets of our cities; but in quiet corners of the online world, through the diligence, and thankless hard work of a handful of grass roots charities, and brilliant researchers, such as those like Dr. Susie Bennett. In this podcast, Dr. Bennett, recently receiving her PhD in male suicide, talks to George from TheTinMen about their work together, and what she’s learnt; lending her impassioned voice to the men who have none, telling us what we needs to change, and revealing the unpopular truths that could finally turn the tide on the epidemic, that devastates the lives of so many men, and bereaved families around the world. What do you think? Special thanks to Elliot Bewick for crewing all this! #malesuicideawareness #malesuicide #mensmentalhealth#mensmentalhealthawareness

The last forty years have seen tremendous, much needed progress for ‘Women in STEM’; as fearsome female scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, are made superheroes of society, and lifted upon a pedestal to inspire young women and girls. The job is not yet done, but it has clearly worked, with women in stem doubling in forty years. However there is another set of superheroes, male ones, no less inspiring, who are silently fighting their own fight too. Men in classrooms and early years teaching. Men in therapy spaces, and within psychology. Those in social work, welfare, and councelling; or activism, the charity sector, or healthcare. These men face their own unique challenges, and their quiet abence from these spaces is felt by all of us. Would more male therapists, get more men into therapy? Would more male teachers, keep more boys in school? Could more male substance abuse councillors, help break more male addictions? Or more male abuse caseworkers, help see more abused men? I don’t know. For those few men who silently work in these fields, should we not give the same societal applause that serenades our “women in STEM”? I mean, if there are twice as many women flying fighter jets in the military, as there are men teaching children in Kindergarten, does that mean the men in these spaces, surrounded by books, toys, and toddlers, are twice the hero? Is that man in a classroom any less inspiring to boys, than that woman in a jet cockpit, is to girls? I don’t think so. So where are these men? Could they be the role models we need? And why are we not talking about them? ~ American Institute for Boys and Men https://lnkd.in/emmxmEHD Men’s Dropout From Mental Health Services: Results From a Survey of Australian Men Across the Life Span https://lnkd.in/eNNw-xhu #mensmentalhealth #stem #womeninstem

We live in a world of progressive and inclusive language; free of stigma, and free of stereotypes. We’ve rightly seen ‘policeman’ become ‘police officer’, as women have joined the force. We’ve seen ‘chairman’ become ‘chair’, as more and more women launch businesses, and join the vibrant landscape of modern entrepreneurship. These, and many others, have become useful and important parts of our 21st century lexicon; but there still remains a dark and controversial area of highly gendered, highly stigmatising language, that has shirked responsibility, and avoided this same scrutiny of progressivism. It’s shocking, almost unbelievable to say it, but a man who is being abused in the UK is considered a woman. Or more jarringly, a ‘male victim of crimes considered Violence against Women and Girls’. Not a ‘male victim’, and certainly not of ‘violence against men and boys’; for neither exist in our politician’s warped world view. We are, it seems, so unwilling to widen our narrow perspectives of ‘domestic violence’, that we’d rather label these inconvenient male victims as abused ‘women’, and hope the world cares little enough to do anything about it. And so far it’s worked. This is not new, but as of yesterday, the Government’s recommitment to such absurdity is, as they refused to create a parallel category or strategy to house these millions of male victims of abuse. So these men and boys remain an invisible, an ugly truth on the boot of politicians; unworthy of acknowledgment, retraumatised and humiliated by these cowardly backward somersaults of mental gymnastics. When will we break free of this one directional narrative of ‘Violence Against Women and Girls’, when so many men and boys are being hurt as a result? Why do these vulnerable men and boys, as they always have, pay the price for the stupidity and cowardice of our political leaders? And who will speak of ‘Violence against Men and Boys’? ~ Sky article https://lnkd.in/es5fNBgc Images by Jesus Era, Jason Leung, and Jakob Owens. #abusedmen #malesurvivors #malevictims

We are starting 2025 strong! On the lookout for a talented researcher in the UK keen to explore some cutting edge questions about contemporary men and masculinities. Please spread far and wide to join our global team! Come change the face of men’s health. Brian P. Heilman Peter Fisher, PhD Dr. Krista Fisher Simon Rice

People seem to think blaming a child for his own murder, is somehow progressive ‘advocacy’. Or at least, that is the final destination we usually arrive at, when we follow them down the topsy-turvy road of ‘gendered violence’ to its inevitable clumsy conclusion. Australia is alight with talk of “an epidemic of violence against women”, with new, and ever more alarming headlines of the dozens of women and girls needlessly, and tragically killed by family members, and overwhelmingly by men. Of course, this one-sided narrative, and the ensuing headlines that are spun from it, would lead you to believe males are not killed in the same way; and any such talk of an ‘epidemic of violence against men and boys’, will win you the tiresome tirade of all-too-familiar insults. But to look at the data will reveal a huge slice of the pie missing, and one we’ve grown used to erasing from view. The complete data is as follows – In Australia, 46 females and 38 males were victim of domestic homicide in 22/23. There it is. But soon, another rebuke, again, no less familiar, arrives… “The men killed were the abusers, and they were killed in self defence!” Yes, intuitively, this makes sense. But again, to look closer, reveals a critical failure of reasoning, and even reading… I never said ’38 men’, I said ’38 male victims’—and that includes boys. In fact, if you look at those ‘males’ killed at home, you will see the number one sub-group are male children, killed by parents. And there we have it, we’ve arrived at the conclusion of – Boy children are killed by their parents… in “self defence”? What kind of world view is that? Either way, these lost men and boys, you will not see them spoken about. Not by Australian politicians, nor by advocates, or the public, the media, and not even Movember, the world’s largest charity for men, who are coincidentally headquartered in Australia too. So if not them – Then who will talk of the males killed, particularly children, and what is to be done with this blanket assertion of “self defence”? What do you think? ~ Source https://lnkd.in/eKdxx-u3 Images by Tadeusz Lakota, Pj Gal Szabo, and Ylona Maria

Hi all, I'm starting an online therapy group for men and non-binary individuals struggling with or recovering from compulsive sexual behavior. The group will meet weekly. The session fee is $100. If you know anyone who you think may benefit from joining this group, please forward this information. They can contact me at ari@satproject.com or www.arilewistherapy.com. Group Blurb: Whether it’s porn use, escorts, or other sexual behaviors you wish you had more control over, this group is here to support you and help keep you accountable to your self-directed goals. About the Facilitator: Ari Lewis specializes in positive sexuality, compulsive sexual behavior, kink, polyam/open relationships, and other sexual and relational issues. In addition to his work as a psychotherapist, Ari is also the Senior Research Specialist for the University of Pennsylvania's Sexuality and Well-Being Project at the Positive Psychology Center and he has taught at Touro University's Graduate School of Social Work. You can read Ari's essay on compulsive sexual behavior and consensual non-monogamy in Kathy Labriola's latest edition of Love in Abundance.