"A Safe Space"
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Men's Mental Health Awareness Month
June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Men’s mental health is an extremely important topic, and over the past few years, we at City Mission have seen an increasing need for mental health services for the men who come through our doors.
“We’re definitely seeing an increase,” said Peggy Nagy, one of City Mission’s Men’s Housing Coordinators. “And the severity is increasing too. Four years ago, with COVID, a lot of men lost their jobs or became separated from their families and with that they lost their purpose or their identity. And the isolation of that time exacerbated any symptoms of anxiety and depression they may have had the disposition to.”
“Unassigned money and unassigned time is the perfect storm for mental health issues,” added Matt Chase, another one of City Mission’s Housing Coordinators for men. “A lot of people experienced both during COVID. And they’re still feeling the effects of it today.”
Men Tend to Avoid Mental Health Treatment
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, “6,000,000 men in the United States experience depression each year,” and “nearly 1 in 10 men experience some form of depression or anxiety but less than half seek treatment.”
Nagy explains, “Many men avoid dealing with mental health issues, because they don’t want to be seen as weak. And often they can’t identify the source of the problem, so it feels like weakness to them.”
“Or it’s just overwhelming,” added Chase. “They don’t know where to start, and they’re not typically in a place in their lives where they know how to advocate for themselves, because they’re just so focused on survival from day to day that they can’t see the big picture.”
Connecting to External Supportive Services
At City Mission, we’re not a mental health facility, so our job is to connect our residents to outside supports to get them the counseling, therapy, or medication they need. But connecting our residents to outside mental health support can be a significant barrier to the success of our residents who struggle with mental health.
“There’s just not enough agencies and services available,” said Chase. “The whole field is underfunded and understaffed. The turnaround time before we can get them the help they need is often difficult. They have to wait sometimes 30 to 60 days.”
Safe Spaces
A crucial aspect of our care for men with mental health issues is to create safe spaces for them to share their problems, and we advocate for them and build a team around them while we teach them to advocate for themselves.
“We hold space for them to lament,” said Nagy. “We create a safe space for them to talk through their problems and learn more about themselves and help them know that they have someone who loves them and will fight for them no matter what.”
“We share the gospel always, but we use words only when necessary,” Chase added. “We show them Christ’s love first through our actions.”
Sharing the love of Christ with everyone who walks through our doors is crucial to the success of our Mission, and for men struggling with mental health, that unconditional love helps give them the confidence to trust our staff. Building trust or developing that therapeutic alliance with our team helps them know they don’t have to go through this alone. This trust helps them open doors to their recovery that they have kept shut their whole lives.
Grief and Trauma
A startling statistic regarding men’s mental health comes from Mental Health America: men are more than four times more likely than women to die by suicide. The National Alliance on Mental Illness explains it this way, “about four out of every five completed suicides is a guy” (If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, dial 988 to reach the Crisis & Suicide Lifeline).
Unresolved grief and trauma are very often the basis of mental health issues for men, and often the trauma can be traced all the way back to childhood, so it is so deeply embedded into their everyday lives that they aren’t able to see it as the source of their problems. And that can be extremely scary, because they can’t identify it or control it or even know how to begin the process of dealing with it. That overwhelming sense of confusion can lead to severe embarrassment and shame, which opens the door to depression and anxiety and a host of other mental health issues. It also opens the door to addiction as they try to self-medicate.
Surprisingly, drug and alcohol dependency often begins as a solution to a problem, a way of coping with the unseen grief and trauma that is wrecking their lives. Eventually, drugs and alcohol become an even greater problem that creates a destructive spiral.
You Can Help
At City Mission we offer radical hospitality for those who are hurting, following Christ’s example of meeting people where they are and treating them with dignity and respect no matter who they are or what they’ve done, while also encouraging them to continually grow in their walk with Christ.
You can support our efforts to walk with our residents through the challenges of grief and trauma and help give them the tools to restore their lives. Visit www.citymission.org to learn more.