Dr Zac Seidler
Director of Mental Health Training, Movember
Healthy male friendships provide meaning, joy and a sense of belonging — now well-understood protective factors against mental health issues, chronic physical health conditions and substance abuse. There’s only one problem: male friendship is in crisis.
Male friendship has been the butt of endless jokes across popular culture for its oft-perceived competitiveness, pack mentality, the need to always be doing something together and, of course, the ruthless banter. However, the reality is that male friendship has the potential to save and prolong lives.
Keeping friends
While modern self-help culture offers men everything from daily mantras to an all-meat diet to help relieve their issues, the thing that will really provide them with the most long-term benefit is right under their nose.
It’s something we all take for granted every day which many of us don’t appreciate or work on as hard as we should. Despite all the good that mateship does, research tells us that as men age, they lose friends to the point where almost one in five middle-aged men say they lack even one close friend.
There are countless men across the country suffering in silence.
Men’s hesitations
For too long, men’s friendships haven’t been a priority. They’ve been seen as something we can live without, especially when the time between catch-ups grows. The group chat falls quiet, and the impetus to break the silence becomes replaced by a fear of awkwardness.
Unfortunately, this means there are countless men across the country suffering in silence. Many of those men are the type who won’t put their hand up to ask for help until it’s too late — sometimes with tragic consequences for themselves or those around them.
Promoting connections
We are all hunting for connection, and we shouldn’t have to wait for adversity to really know our friends or for them to know us. Life is happening all around us, and we need to talk about the tough stuff. We must embrace and adapt to the changing tides, not rally against them. As a society, it’d do us all a lot of good.
