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Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month: the message behind the moustache

November, otherwise known as Movember, is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. While Movember may best be known for an advertising campaign of photographs of men sporting 70s-style moustaches, the message behind the humour is serious. 

What started in 2003 in Australia between two friends over a beer soon expanded to a worldwide campaign. The charity’s focus was initially raising awareness about prostate cancer, but it broadened its outlook on realising that depression and anxiety were significant issues amongst men which were not being addressed.

Men’s mental health and suicide prevention is now one of Movember’s three main focuses.

The statistics analysing the status of men’s mental health are stark and demonstrate why the approach to men’s mental health services needs to be reconsidered.

This disparity is not just gender based. 

Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month plays a vital role in bringing this issue to the fore so that mental health services can find ways to address this disparity. The aim moving forward is twofold. First, men need to access mental health services in the community early on, before an escalation to a mental health crisis requiring detention. Second, community-based mental health services need to be tailored to meet that need and overcome barriers that men face in accessing appropriate treatment.   

Our specialist mental health lawyers are available to advise patients and their families in relation to accessing mental health treatment, as well as all aspects of detention in hospital. To make an enquiry please contact the team here.

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