Depression in men: the silent killer we need to talk about
Boys don’t cry. It’s an odd bit of advice I have been getting ever since my brain started forming memories. In the heady days of my youth, the phrase was doled out almost every time I found myself in extreme pain. There was that one time some game ended in me landing, chest first, on a badly placed thorn bush. Then there was the time I got bitten by a dog, and that time it seemed like a good idea to sit on an electric fence.
What’s common through each of these moments of exquisite pain is that I was told, “Big boys don’t cry”. Over the years the words have changed (one now gets told to “man up” or “take it like a man”), but the sentiment remains the same — if you have a sliver of flesh dangling between your legs, it’s best to stuff your emotions into a secret cabinet until you die. It doesn’t take Dr Phil to recognise that this is an impressively unhealthy way to go about your life, but it does go a long way toward explaining why South African men — especially black men — are getting their asses kicked in the battle against depression.
The workplace can also be an incubator for burnout and depression. For most of us, the idea of asking our boss for a few days off because we are “sad” or struggling with our mental health is laughable. By boxing ourselves into the role of provider or chief breadwinner, men often feel obligated to soldier through their workplace burdens with little regard for their mental health. Sadly, most employers are more than happy to let them do it. Many companies place a higher value on the employee who grinds themselves to dust in service of the company goals than on a well-adjusted and happy workforce, despite the latter having been shown to be better for productivity.
Having come from fathers who endured police dogs, hoses, and all manner of terrors, black South African men have developed an interesting quirk in their psychology. Fuelled in part by patriarchy— and all the toxicity that comes with it — we’ve come to believe that the gold standard of what a man should be is some kind of magic mix between Superman and Steve Biko. Real men don’t cry, show pain, or get hurt. Real men don’t complain. They shoulder their burdens with implacable, tireless resolve. The thing we often forget is that real men are also real human beings: prone to failure, physical injury, and most importantly, mental fatigue. Sweeping our emotions under the rug only creates a tripping hazard, and given how fragile we know the male ego to be, allowing all that emotional buildup seems like a recipe for disaster.