MEN AND DISTRESS
Men and distress: the final frontier? David Peters Editor-in-chief, JHH
Damien Ridge Psychotherapist and social scientist
I started exploring groupwork back in the 1970s when humanistic psychology landed in London from California. As I get older I find I’m increasingly interested in my relationships with men and especially in the conversations and fellowship that I have know arise in men’s circles. There’s an honesty in them and a shared vulnerability that can feel very powerful, meaningful, and I would even say timeless. What I have learned through them about my own gifts and wounds has made me want to widen men’s access to these circles. David Peters
in distress; a service inside the
I am a psychotherapist and social scientist, currently Professor of Health Studies and Head of Psychology, at the University of Westminster, London. My special interest is patient experience and mental health. I have published over 90 academic papers. I first began to flesh out what recovery from depression entailed for patients when I was with the Health Experiences Research Group (HERG) at the University of Oxford. In my work, I variously explore people's experiences of mental health. For example, I examine how the stories people tell about themselves can help them take control of their condition to recover; how men use heroic stories of overcoming depression to negotiate a potentially feminising condition; and how the issues of authenticity and legitimacy are key to understanding how employees with depression respond to the challenges they face.
NHS to which GPs could refer
Damien Ridge
In 2013 Damien Ridge and David Peters worked together to pilot a new kind of service. They aimed to provide something upstream for men
men whose emotional wellbeing was causing concern, but who didn’t have an actual mental illness. The service, which was named ‘Atlas’, offered men acupuncture (they saw this as a way of helping with the sorts of physical symptoms men sometimes present with when they are upset) and the chance to talk about their thoughts and feelings with a counsellor. Atlas was shortlisted for an annual BMJ award in 2015.
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DP: Damien tell us about your research focus. DR: It’s research about gender and mental health in general and particularly depression (Ridge, Emslie and White 2011; Ridge et al, 2015; Ridge and Ziebland 2006). I’m a trustee at CALM (www.thecalmzone.net), the male suicide prevention charity. I’m very interested in men getting better access to therapy. Traditionally, its been accepted that talking, and talking about your feelings specifically, and that being vulnerable, are wrong for men. It’s been said that therapy feels feminising to men. But I think things are changing and men are more and more open to exploring emotion and vulnerability, and that when they are in distress more men are open to therapy as a way forward. At some point (I don’t know what
age it was for you) boys suddenly start getting all these messages that it’s not OK to cry, or to show vulnerability, and that it’s time to close up and shut up; as we say now, to ‘man up’. Vulnerability goes underground then, but it is still there, it is still an important part of human growth. It becomes culturally OK for men to be angry, but not to express ‘weakness’ from that point on. So there’s a hidden rulebook. DP: Actually not so hidden. Anger becomes a kind of default mode. Perhaps even a way of keeping a lid on what lies deeper down: sadness, fear maybe. DR: We men go through this change, which is like a hidden rite of passage. Whereas in other cultures the threshold into ‘manhood’ is recognised, consciously organised, and
© Journal of holistic healthcare
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Volume 14 Issue 3 Autumn 2017
