this talk: is about the power of talking clubs for male mental health- with Ben Akers
“My journey with mental health?” That’s already an interesting question.
Would we ever start an article with “My journey with physical health?” “Yeah I put on weight here.” “Got fit then.” “Now I’m older it’s harder to look after my weight”.
Because that’s what mental health is. It’s like physical health but our mind.
It’s harder to identify. We can see the benefits of physical fitness, but not so much mental fitness.
For me there has been a major change in the way I look at my ‘Mental Health’ by reframing it as ‘Mental Fitness’. Suddenly I know it’s something that needs to be worked at. That I might get mentally injured. That I need to work on getting (mentally) fit again.
I’ve always had an interesting relationship with mental health. My Dad was schizophrenic. When I was a kid he got sectioned. It was quite a traumatic time. But positives came from it. My mum became a therapist and for 35 years she has supported me in my mental health journey. She has always been there for me and always encouraged and allowed me to talk about my problems and worries. Even this morning, as we are stuck in the middle of the Coronavirus epidemic - and she is in Northern Ireland and I’m in Bristol - we talked about my anxieties both financially and family - and I feel lighter/fitter.
I had depression at University. Being away from home. Pressures of uni. Being confronted with situations I wasn’t trained to face. I had a tough job as an advertising creative. Yeah sounds tough... but imagine walking into a room where everything that comes out of your mind is judged. You say this is the best I can come up with, that I’ve spent 2 weeks thinking about it (and paid money to do that) - and everyone including the client’s wife or mum can judge you and say it’s crap. High rewards. But even lower lows. 99.9% of your ideas will never see the light of day. That’s tough on your mental health. But you learn to cope. We were never taught. You just learn. Some people coped better than others.
I loved the job. Ideas. Solving problems. Pressures, well that was harder to adapt to. Then after 20 years in advertising, growing up in London, working in the best agencies we moved to Sydney - having our first child there. 6 years there, then coming back to the UK. To Manchester - our second child there. Then Bristol - our third child here. I discovered different pressures being a father. But all this seemed to pale into insignificance when on the 28th of May 2014 my childhood best friend Steve Yates took his own life. It hit me hard. As kids we were inseparable. Brothers by another mother. Born 4 days apart. How did he get to this point?
For years I struggled with “Why?”. But a couple of years ago I read an article saying that suicide was the biggest killer of Men under 45. So, statistically the thing most likely to kill me, is me. I knew I needed to do something to stop the next Steve. Around that time I came across an article that said men of my age watch Sport and Documentaries...
So I thought, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll make a film. “Steve” is a positive documentary about male mental health. Real people. Real conversations. And most importantly Real solutions.For a year I travelled the country talking to amazing people, learning why it’s happening, and what we can do to stop it.
I finished the film last March. But it was only the start. I needed to get this film to the men who need it the most. So I took the film to... Pubs, sports clubs, gyms, building sites - wherever men naturally were.
I’ve now done 49 screenings. Everyone from Coutts (The Queens bank) to a Category B Prison. From Aberdeen to Falmouth. Each one very different. Each one sparking open conversations. Each one bigger than just the film. I found that pubs are the best. Yeah I know about the relationship between alcohol and depression. But men feel comfortable in pubs. And when I showed my vulnerability, other men opened up. That’s when the idea of Talk Club came about. A talking group for men. Moving from Mental health Awareness to Mental Health Action.
So with 5 other people from the film (including my Producer wife Claire) we began to get to work. With some simple rules on how to talk. Not to give advice or judge. Just to to enable talking (and listening).
And through the development of this is where I discovered how to embrace Mental fitness. Because talking regularly can keep you mentally fit.
It all begins with a question, well, two questions… “How are you? Out of 10?”. And then we ask them to explain why it’s that number. Everyone’s number’s different. Personal to them. One man’s 5 could be another man’s 7. It’s just a technique. A way to own your mental state. But it works.
Like this morning - I woke up at a ‘5’. Most mornings I wake up at a low number. I have 3 kids under 7 and I rarely get a full night’s sleep. Worrying about money and the state of the world added to me waking up at a ‘5’. But what I’ve found is, while I can’t control what I wake up at, I can control the way I look at the rest of the day. So for me it turns into a game. How do I get myself to a ‘6’ before breakfast? To a ‘7’ by lunch? To an ‘8’? So I went for my one bit of exercise running down by the harbour. Came back, had a muesli and fruit breakfast. And then made pancakes for the kids - while dancing around to Pharrell’s “Happy”. And my number started to rise. So this is how I look after my mental health. Being on top of it all the time.
In just under a year Talk Club has grown from 8 of us meeting in the back of the Bristol Beer to a private online Facebook community of nearly 1,200 and 32 physical groups around the world (and more are added weekly.)
So my journey has been from my own battles to receiving emails daily thanking me. I can’t do anything to bring Steve back but I can do my best to stop the next man.
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