6/16/25

June means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It is the month of pride, in which queer people of all backgrounds can come together and celebrate each other based on the very thing that makes them stand out from everyone else. It is the month of Juneteenth, when Americans band together to celebrate the anniversary of the end of slavery. It is the month of Father's Day, when children, parents, and grandparents send well wishes and thanks for - essentially - their ability to reproduce, and doing it successfully. However, if that was not enough, it is also the second month in a row in which mental health gets a seat at the table, but this time, it's for men only. 

cruelty, and stoicism rather than human connection and honesty toward one another. They aim to be providers who fend for their families without the trouble of genuine conversations or emotional reliability. However, this is not to say that men don't experience any of those things - in fact, I would argue that 99.99% of men experience emotions in the exact same way as anyone else. The key difference is that most people with emotions are, in some ways, taught how to deal with them. 

As those with the bare minimum observatory skills will understand, such principles of what it means to be a "man" are outdated. We want people to behave like people, rather than blanket statements for what a certain kind of "people" should be. This has, in many ways, caught up to men as well, and their understanding of what emotions are is growing at an accelerated rate. The downside is that for the past few centuries, men have been raised without this mindset. They know how to throw a ball far, and they can spout off about any one given major league *insert*ball player, but when it came time for them to begin asking for help when necessary and admit that, like any other human being, they too have issues that need addressing, their short comings began to become aparent. The existence of Men's Mental Health Awareness Month might suggest that they are finally given the space to properly address their emotions in a way that could prevent every single other person from having to do so for them. However, that feels like high hopes. 

matches, or a video of a gay guy talking about how bad his mental health was when being bullied in high school, or generally anybody speaking on a negative experience in their own life; and a man will appear in their comment section, bringing up the suicide rate and death via war statistics. The issue is not that people do not care for such statistics, but rather the way in which they are brought up is never as a genuine concern for their existence, but solely as a dismantling tool for anyone else's problems. The issue is that men have not been given the necessary tools to handle such large-scale difficulties. They know how to compete, they know how to be logical, but they do not know how to enter conversations in a way that allows others to receive their comments in a remotely positive manner. 

love is a very special thing to have, it's something I was always excited to share, and that my willingness to say it to my friends did not take away from the impact of its meaning; it only added to the significance of our friendship. A few months later, he approached me and confessed that his view of the word had slightly shifted. He still wasn't going to throw it around quite as freely as I did with everyone I loved, but he realized that his desire to spend time with his friends, to ask about their days, to go on little day trips and get lunch together now and again, was him experiencing love for them. I always remembered that interaction, not because I felt like I singularly changed his perspective of love and the way he as a man could go about experiencing it, but because he alone came to the conclusion that something he had once felt strongly enough to bring up to me in opposition, was not the only reality for him to accept. 

calling it, is the lack of lessons learned. My friend was a rare case in men learning from their own experiences; taking something they had been raised to know as true, and thinking critically about the reality of living a life without feeling free to express that side of them. This is that crucial element of maturity that takes what should be a month of honor for those people who did not receive the care to understand their feelings, let alone their mental health, into a month of boys spouting off about how women picking a bear over them is the reason the holiday exists. 

place - to be these strong, courageous, tough provider figures who aren't bothered by little things like sadness or feelings in general. But why do you need to? If the statistic that men kill themselves at a higher rate than anyone else is so troublesome, why is June the only time you bring it up? I argue that men's mental health does not matter more or less than anyone else's, but that it does matter; thus, the only way to combat the dialogue that it does not is to stop pretending that it doesn't exist at all. The reason the suicide rate is the way it is is because men go their entire lives forcing themselves to be people they are not for no reason other than falling victim to their own dialogue, realizing that the life they have led is not one that brings them contentment until it is too late to change it; so change it. Cry when needed, jump with joy when desired. Stop making other men's mental health worse by hiding your own, and for yours and everyone else's sake, stop making it everyone else's problem. Feel things the way everyone else does, and live a life that allows you to enjoy Mental Health Awareness Month in May.