JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

MENtal health: Why is it ignored?

by

1334 days ago
20211130

Dr Nicholas N Maraj

“Doc, I just doh know what to do. I doh have any mon­ey com­ing in, I can’t feed my fam­i­ly, the rent due, the bills pil­ing up. I un­der plen­ty pres­sure. I feel­ing like I fail­ing my fam­i­ly. I feel­ing like less than a man” – Tim (not his re­al name), a pa­tient of mine in clin­ic says to me when I try to get down to the core is­sue of his prob­lem. I feel his pain.

This seems to be one of the most re­cur­ring things I hear these days in my prac­tice. I see a lot of peo­ple. Work­ing class peo­ple. Econ­o­my-class peo­ple. Busi­ness-class peo­ple. This type of sto­ry is re­lat­ed by not less than 50% of the men I treat.

One of the core at­trib­ut­es of be­ing a man is be­ing able to pro­vide for one’s fam­i­ly. That is mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, but most­ly takes the form of meet­ing their fi­nan­cial, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al needs. No man wants to have their fam­i­ly want­i­ng for food, cloth­ing or shel­ter.

Im­pact of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic

How­ev­er, men’s abil­i­ty to be bread­win­ners have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Lots of men have be­come un­em­ployed or un­der­em­ployed. Men have used up all their sick days, their no pay leave and then some have been let go by their em­ploy­ers. Worse hit are those who have ac­tu­al­ly had Covid-19 and have the “Long haul” Covid-19 symp­toms of dif­fi­cul­ty with their men­tal clar­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, the price of goods and ser­vices has sky­rock­et­ed due to glob­al sup­ply chain is­sues. This dual ef­fect has led to many, many men not be­ing able to pro­vide fi­nan­cial­ly for their fam­i­ly. When a man is un­able to meet this need, he feels like much less of a man. He feels he has failed as a man.

In many so­ci­eties, men are taught that they need to be strong, self-suf­fi­cient, not show their emo­tions and worse yet, not talk about any of these things. Be­ing fear­ful, de­pressed or anx­ious are signs of “weak­ness” that aren't com­pat­i­ble with be­ing “re­al men”. We are sold these stereo­types by the male role mod­els in Hol­ly­wood, in sports and in our lo­cal TV com­mer­cials. It is per­pet­u­at­ed by men and women alike (vis a vie “The strong silent type”). But many stud­ies have linked this pat­tern of “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty” to many ad­verse ef­fects for men.

The da­ta is un­de­ni­able. USA Sta­tis­tics:

- Over six mil­lion men in Amer­i­ca suf­fer year­ly from De­pres­sion.

- More than four times as many men as women die by sui­cide.

- Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20% of all men de­vel­op al­co­hol de­pen­den­cy dur­ing their lives.

- By not ad­dress­ing the core rea­sons for this, we are fail­ing our broth­ers and our fa­thers.

What are the signs to look for?

Many men ad­mit to feel­ing de­pressed about their sit­u­a­tion. Giv­en so­ci­ety’s bur­den on men to not ap­pear “weak”, many men sub­con­scious­ly man­i­fest this stress it­self in many ways such as vague headaches, dif­fi­cul­ties with con­cen­trat­ing, fa­tigue, back pain and sleep­ing dif­fi­cul­ties to name a few. When the soft­ware of the per­son (the mind) is dis­tressed, the symp­toms are usu­al­ly man­i­fest­ed in the hard­ware (the body). These symp­toms when not ad­dressed cre­ate a neg­a­tive feed­back loop which fur­ther com­pounds the un­der­ly­ing is­sue.

Some men al­so utilise mal­adapt­ed cop­ing mech­a­nisms such as al­co­hol mis­use (Health guide­lines ad­vo­cate for males to con­sume two or less al­co­holic bev­er­ages a day). Ex­ces­sive drink­ing how­ev­er, is a dark abyss which per­pet­u­ates the prob­lem as it dam­ages your brain and liv­er, drains your lim­it­ed funds and in the most un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances, can lead to vi­o­lence. The sad part is, your prob­lems are still there the day af­ter, and may ac­tu­al­ly be worse from poor de­ci­sions made while in­tox­i­cat­ed.

How to talk about it?

This is al­ways a top­ic of dis­cus­sion. Men gen­er­al­ly do not like to ap­pear in­fe­ri­or to oth­er men. So, talk­ing about these kinds of top­ics is typ­i­cal­ly taboo. Men need to be com­fort­able with some­one to be able to talk about their men­tal health is­sues. We need to give men ac­cess to safe spaces to be able to vent their thoughts and emo­tions, to pro­vide bet­ter adapt­ed cop­ing mech­a­nisms and to en­able bet­ter sup­port sys­tems. They need to be able to de­com­press with­out feel­ing judged, with­out feel­ing like less of a man, in the eyes of both men and women. We need to have more male role mod­els (sports­men, mu­si­cians) val­i­dat­ing that it is ok, to NOT BE ok, that talk­ing about it is OK and that get­ting sup­port for it is OK.

Where can help be at­tained?

There are sev­er­al places men can go, just to get some­one to talk to.

There are two “Stress Re­lief Cen­tres” re­cent­ly opened dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, one in St Joseph, one in Ch­agua­nas (num­bers be­low), staffed with trained men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als which cater to both men and women. They are ab­solute­ly free and no ap­point­ment is nec­es­sary.

COVID-19 has af­fect­ed us all, from the well off to the less well off. It has tak­en a great toll on all of our men­tal health. Be­ing a man now is hard­er than it has been for a long time. But with both men and women sup­port­ing each oth­er, we can all live a lit­tle bet­ter and get out of this pan­dem­ic to­geth­er.

The num­bers for the men­tal health walk in clin­ics are as fol­lows:

St Joseph : 397-7016

Ch­agua­nas : 672-4357

About the Au­thor

Dr Nicholas Maraj is Con­sul­tant Physi­cian at the De­part­ment of Med­i­cine, EWM­SC. He is fel­low­ship trained in Vas­cu­lar and Gen­er­al Neu­rol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, Cana­da. He is a Fel­low of the Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, Ed­in­burgh. Dr Maraj is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Synapse Med­ical Ser­vices Ltd with of­fices at St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal and South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic. The of­fice con­tact is 367-9368.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored