Men ‘more vulnerable to recession blues’

London, May 11: The global economic downturn is taking toll on men’s mental health, a new survey has found.The survey, conducted by mental health charity Mind, found almost 40 percent of men to be feeling low with job security, work and money playing on their minds.

The survey of 2,000 adults also found that men are less likely than women to seek help from their GP or a counsellor. It seems that men are more reluctant to talk about when they were feeling stressed or low than women. The results showed that only 29 percent of men would talk to friends about their problems compared with 53 percent of women and they were also less likely to talk to their family. Men were also less likely to seek out professional help and a third would feel embarrassed about it. And 5 percent of men said they had experienced suicidal thoughts compared with 2 percent of women. Mind said men and women suffer mental health problems in roughly equal numbers, but men are much less likely to be diagnosed and treated for it. The recession could make the situation much worse, with research showing one in seven men develop depression within six months of losing their jobs. "The recession is clearly having a detrimental impact on the nation`s mental health, but men in particular are struggling with the emotional impact,” the BBC quoted Paul Farmer, chief executive at Mind, as saying. "Being a breadwinner is something that is still crucial to the male psyche so if a man loses his job he loses a large part of his identity putting his mental wellbeing in jeopardy. "The problem is that too many men wrongly believe that admitting mental distress makes them weak and this kind of self stigma can cost lives," he added. ANI