On average, one in eight men will experience depression and one in five men will experience anxiety at some stage of their lives.
Blokes make up an average of six out of every eight suicides every single day in Australia.
The number of men who die by suicide in Australia every year is nearly double the national road toll.
They’re some scary statistics from Beyond Blue, and unfortunately, they’re statistics that stem from the difficulty that some men have in opening up and talking about how they are feeling, therefore having serious impacts on their mental health and wellbeing.
Trying to go it alone when you’re feeling down increases the risk of depression or anxiety going unrecognised and untreated, and depression is a high-risk factor for suicide and plays a contributing role to the big difference in suicide rates for men and women.
That’s where The Man Walk comes in.
Originally started a year ago by Kiama physiotherapist Mark Burns (who simply began walking each weekday morning to improve his own mental health and productivity in general life, but was soon joined by both friends and strangers), The Man Walk has become an important vehicle in men’s mental health by creating a space available for men to talk about how they’re going.
With a simple motto at the helm – walk, talk, support – this initiative has touched thousands of people across the country, including Chris Lytas and Luke Outerbridge, two strangers who came together less than six months ago to initiate The Man Walk Geelong with the aim of boosting men’s physical and mental well-being to meet the need in the community for such free, informal support in Victoria’s second-largest city.
For Luke, the catalyst for change was following an encounter with a friend who was silently battling mental health issues and who had reached the point of wanting to take his own life.
“It really took me back; I had no idea, and questioned why he didn’t reach out,” Luke reveals. “He just said he didn’t know how to approach reaching out; how to talk about it. He just needed someone to talk to, so I went right, okay, I need to do something here, I’m forming something in Geelong. I just didn’t know what to do or what that was.”
Through a mutual friend, Luke was connected to Chris, who shares the same desire to shine a light on men’s mental health in Geelong following the loss of a close friend to suicide three years ago.
“I look back now, and I realise I dealt with that the way a lot of blokes deal with it – I didn’t,” Chris explains. “I threw myself into work, ignored everything else, suppressed it, and at some point, something was going to snap… and it did. That snap – once I got through it and came out the other side – was me giving myself that kick up the arse to go, ‘you can go left or you can go right, what way do you want to go?’ And I chose right.”
Running every Saturday morning from 7am, and now every Wednesday night at 7pm, The Man Walk Geelong provides a non-judgemental, casual and supportive environment for blokes in Geelong, at any age doing it tough.
“The idea behind it is to build some habit, build a sense of community for men, get them talking, and give them an understanding that they’re not on their own and it’s okay to speak up, or just even build some social connections,” explains Chris.
“We’re not by any means a counseling service; we pride ourselves as a community group that is effectively doing beneficial things for men’s mental health,” Chris continues. “If you listen to the conversations during the walk, it’s mostly about sports, life, politics, you name it. Occasionally, someone will put their hand up and go ‘you know what, I’m not dealing with this’, and we’ll talk through it and you’ll find that there are probably two or three others in the group that have been through the same thing, and that goes back to that feeling of not being alone, that ‘this isn’t unique to me’.”
Meeting at the Fountain at Eastern Beach, the leisurely walk sees the group walk together for 45-60 minutes, before concluding at Winifreds Cafe where partners and friends are welcomed to join for a coffee and a chat.
Since its beginning, the walk has seen men of all different ages and walks of life join in. Some coming on their own, others with friends; it’s seen fathers and sons, as well as complete strangers; some touched by suicide, some with family issues; and some who just want a support network.
“It’s a basic principle. It’s the same time, same location, same day of the week, every week. That goes with that aforementioned notion of habit; it builds that habit that they know for us on a Saturday morning, they’ve got to be at the fountain at 7am,” Chris says. “There’s no registration process, there’s no sign-up, there’s no check-in, and there’s no follow up if they don’t turn up, and that’s part of the secret to why it works so well.
“There is no formal process to it, but we’ve got men who feel that they want to come and that they need to come, for their own benefit more so than anything.”
Filling a gap for men who want a bit of activity and a bit of communication in their lives, Chris and Luke don’t take their responsibility lightly and are in the midst of creating an online hub that will list local services, social opportunities, and highlight resources for those men wanting professional help.
“There’s nothing that exists in the Geelong region that highlights where those local services are. There are guys doing monthly BBQs, there’s a men’s bookclub that meets once a month, there’s a bloke that does Men’s Camping Retreats – but there’s no platform to find out about these events,” Chris explains. “We’ve got the drive and the know-how between the two of us to make this the central platform for people in Geelong and the Surf Coast to go to when they’re looking for those sort of connections and resources.”
With the first step to improving mental health being the encouragement of conversation and making space available for men to talk about how they’re going, The Man Walk Geelong is a monumental step forward in providing a safe place for blokes to get together and support each other in Geelong.
Head on down to Eastern Beach on Saturday at 7am, or Wednesday at 7pm to join in on the Man Walk, and join the Facebook Group ‘The Man Walk – Geelong’.
You can also visit official website themanwalk.com.au/