In support of International Men’s Day on November 19th Grand Central have teamed up with ANDYSMANCLUB to help raise awareness for men’s mental health.
What is International Men’s Day?
International men’s day is a day recognized worldwide for all of us to take the opportunity to celebrate the positive values that men bring to the world, their families, and their wider communities. It is a chance for everyone to appreciate the men in their lives and the contributions they make.
A brief history
International men’s day was founded in 1999 by Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, a history lecturer from the West Indies. Calls for a day of recognition for men had been voiced since as far back as the 1960’s. Between the 60’s and 1999, lower key, small scale celebrations were enacted in countries such as Russia, the USA, Canada, and China, but it was only after 1999 that the day became more widely recognised on a global scale. The day isn’t intended to compete with International Women’s Day but to complement it.
International men’s day has many aims and objectives. These include,
- A focus on men’s and boy’s physical and mental health
- The improvement of gender relations and promotion of gender equality
- Celebrating positive male role models
- Highlighting men’s contributions to family, marriage, friends, work, and their children.
There is usually a theme with international men’s day too. For instance, in 2003 the theme was men’s health, in 2007 it was healing and forgiveness, and this year's theme is zero male suicide.
Facts and figures
Men today face many difficult challenges and in a lot of cases they face these challenges alone. Men often don’t open up about their feelings and instead internalise them, which can start a negative spiral where things get worse.
Men in the UK aged 20 to 49 are more likely to die from suicide than any other cause of death. In 2015 nearly 75% of all suicides were males. At present in 2023, on average 86 males are dying a week due to suicide, that’s 12 a day……
A recent survey by Gillette found that 45% of men questioned stated they still felt unable to talk about their feelings.
About ANDYSMANCLUB
ANDYSMANCLUB are a men’s suicide prevention charity, offering peer-to-peer support groups for men over 18 going through storms in their lives, every Monday at 7pm excluding bank holidays. Groups are free to attend with no registration required.
The group was founded after the death by suicide of Andy Roberts. Andy gave no indication to his family that he was suicidal, as a result, his brother-in-law, Luke Ambler, and mother, Elaine Roberts, founded ANDYSMANCLUB in the hope that men who struggled to open up had a safe space to do so.
The first ANDYSMANCLUB session ran in Halifax in 2016, with 9 men in attendance on the night. The groups follow the same model they did on the first night and are now available in hundreds of locations nationwide, stretching from Plymouth to Aberdeen. Following on from the Covid-19 pandemic, ANDYSMANCLUB created an online function via Google Meet. This follows the same model and enables men who cannot leave their home due to a variety of issues to join sessions. In the long-term, the charity aims to have a location within 30 minutes travel of any man in the UK.
Local sessions
Bradford
Halifax
Brighouse
Mirfield
Pontefract
Doncaster
Sunderland
Hartlepool
York
To find out more, email info@andysmanclub.co.uk or head to https://andysmanclub.co.uk/