Men­tal Health Amer­i­ca has des­ig­nat­ed the month of June to raise aware­ness about the men­tal health of men. Glob­al­ly, men kill them­selves three times as much as women.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly every minute a man some­where in the world dies by sui­cide. More men are al­so vic­tims of homi­cide and their life ex­pectan­cy is less than fe­males.

The fact that our psy­chi­atric clin­ics have been over­flow­ing with pa­tients shows that we have been slow­ly break­ing down the stig­ma of those who are seek­ing treat­ment for men­tal ill­ness.

The stress clin­ics, the pro­vi­sion of more pae­di­atric bed spaces in the Mt Hope hos­pi­tal, and the launch of the sui­cide Hot­line 800-COPE show men­tal health is on the radar of our Gov­ern­ment.

Men­tal well-be­ing may take 12 ses­sions of CBT (Cog­ni­tive Be­hav­iour­al Ther­a­py) to at­tempt to change an un­healthy thought pat­tern. We are faced with old pa­tients need­ing to con­tin­ue psy­chother­a­py and new pa­tients need­ing care. It can be chal­leng­ing at times.

There is still a need to work for our men who hes­i­tate to seek men­tal help.

Yes­ter­day I shared a plat­form with CoP Ear­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the pre­vi­ous CoP Stephen Williams, try­ing to sen­si­tise male po­lice of­fi­cers on the need to seek help.

There is still work to be done in rais­ing aware­ness and ad­dress­ing the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges faced by men.

The tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles and cul­tur­al norms have per­pet­u­at­ed the myth that men should be strong, sto­ic, and un­emo­tion­al.

This per­cep­tion has cre­at­ed bar­ri­ers for men to open­ly ex­press their feel­ings and seek help.

Men be­long to a high-risk group and should be pre­pared to recog­nise de­pres­sion in them­selves and their friends.

Po­lice work has been re­gard­ed as one of the most stress­ful oc­cu­pa­tions, of­ten re­sult­ing in health-re­lat­ed prob­lems such as poor men­tal and phys­i­cal health among of­fi­cers.

Men are more like­ly to turn to sub­stance abuse, en­gage in risky be­hav­iours, or ex­pe­ri­ence anger and ir­ri­tabil­i­ty and are less like­ly to seek pro­fes­sion­al help or talk to friends and fam­i­ly about their strug­gles.

Men’s Men­tal Health Month seeks to break down the bar­ri­ers that pre­vent men from seek­ing help.

A 2011 study by Hart­ley et al found that US po­lice of­fi­cers had more health-re­lat­ed is­sues than the gen­er­al US-em­ployed pop­u­la­tion (eg, de­pres­sion, 33.0 vs 8.0 per cent; meta­bol­ic syn­drome, 26.7 vs 18.7 per cent; serum cho­les­terol lev­els, 200.8 mg/dL vs 193.2 mg/dL).

Women are said to have twice the rate of de­pres­sion as men but they reach out for help.

Men will talk about not be­ing able to sleep, about back pain, but they won’t say they’re feel­ing sad and in­com­pe­tent,

Around 60 per cent of de­pressed men do not seek treat­ment. Ei­ther it is not recog­nised or they are ashamed to seek help.

We need to get this mes­sage through since the tools of their trade, their weapons, make it eas­i­er for of­fi­cers to die by sui­cide.

One in five peo­ple would suc­cumb to a men­tal ill­ness.

Just as po­lice of­fi­cers are trained to recog­nise the crim­i­nal and fight off a phys­i­cal at­tack us­ing their Glock 19 pis­tol to as­sist, so too, of­fi­cers must get the skill set to recog­nise when they are un­der emo­tion­al at­tack and get a sup­port sys­tem (we can give the Ati­van and Prozac tablets to avert a cri­sis.)

Men can’t dis­pute the fig­ures we are see­ing glob­al­ly.

Be­tween 15 and 29 years old, sui­cide is the fourth high­est cause of death glob­al­ly. Over 700,000 peo­ple die glob­al­ly due to sui­cide every year.

Po­lice of­fi­cers are known to suf­fer from chron­ic stress, PTSD, anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, al­co­hol and sub­stance abuse, and at­tempt­ed sui­cide. Their job can pre­cip­i­tate this.

Oth­er fac­tors in life can add to this stress.

In­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies re­port that at least 40 per cent of of­fi­cers ex­posed to a sig­nif­i­cant­ly stress­ful case can de­vel­op dis­tress­ing re­ac­tions with­in a year’s fol­low-up.

Pro­longed pat­terns of these pre­sen­ta­tions have qual­i­fied of­fi­cers with di­ag­noses such as de­pres­sion, acute stress dis­or­der, or post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der.

Based on one study, 15-18 per cent of NYPD of­fi­cers present with such psy­cho­log­i­cal fall­outs of their job.

As first re­spon­ders, peo­ple who see trau­ma can suc­cumb to trau­ma. They see the evil that men do the bru­tal killings, slaugh­ter of chil­dren, and rapes. This changes one’s view of the world.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion­al or work­place stres­sors, in­clud­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, job dis­sat­is­fac­tion, and shift work, staff short­age can take their toll. At­tend­ing court with many ad­journ­ments and mag­is­trates be­ing too le­nient on crim­i­nals all de­mor­alise our of­fi­cers.

Batch loy­al­ty should not just be about de­fend­ing one an­oth­er in the field, but tak­ing care of each oth­er at their weak­est point if they slip in­to men­tal ill­ness.