This documentary really brought to light how important mental health is for men. I feel a lot of the time women are seen to be more open to talking about their feelings, whereas, I feel in this day and age men need to be just as open too.

Roman Kemp talks about how he lost his friend to suicide a few years ago and he wants to bring to light how we can help our friends who might be feeling suicidal into getting better and not making a choice that will affect not only their life, but the lives of everyone around them too.

He meets different age groups of men who have gone through a friend committing suicide themselves and how it affected them and what they wish they had done instead to prevent it. He also speaks to a friend of his who was in that dark place and could’ve ended his own life but thankfully got out of it, and hearing him talk about how his biggest issue was opening up was very hard to hear.

I think when you talk about mental health a lot of people put it on the person who is suffering’s back. They’re always saying you should be reaching out, you should be talking to someone, but when you’re in that frame of mind you don’t want to talk to people. You already feel like a burden to the people around you so why would you want to burden these people even more with your dark thoughts? What really should be done is their friends should reach out to them and make sure that they’re okay and not have it the other way round because, when you’re in a good frame of mind, you can help people feel better, but when you’re in a bad frame of mind you just want to disappear and not have to deal with it anymore.

The group that really intrigued me were three boys who lost one of their friends a few years back and now have a two step verification rule. So at the start of any conversation someone asks you ‘are you okay?’ and you’re usually like ‘yeah I’m fine’ but then they will ask again ‘are you really okay?’ and that’s when people are more likely to open up and say ‘no I’ve had issues with this … no I need to get this off my chest’ and so instead of just bottling those feelings up they’re more likely to talk about them and reach out and discuss the issues they have rather than letting it fester and take them over.

I feel as well making this documentary all about men was very poignant and very good because I feel as a woman myself I am very open to talking to my friends about my feelings and how I’m doing. Whereas I feel with men they’re much more reserved and much more likely to keep it to themselves, and so if we can get more men to talk about their feelings and open up then we can save more men from doing disastrous things.

I think this whole frame of mind of just manning up and getting on with it as well is so toxic. Sometimes you do have to man up, sometimes these issues are out of your control, but sometimes you should be able to talk to other people and say ‘hey I’m not okay can we talk about this?’ just to get it off your chest. I think the best way to make yourself feel better is to talk to someone else about it and if they can relate to that situation then you don’t feel so alone.

I think in this day and age people really need to open up more because there’s so much damage happening in the world. From lockdown, to the environment, to differing opinions, to social media, everything can make you feel worse and being able to share that with other people who might be able to help will hopefully help you feel better. Even if it doesn’t solve the problem it’s still a step in the right direction to making those changes that will hopefully deter you from doing anything permanent that can cause you and the people around you pain.

I think the most important thing is knowing that you are loved and you do have people around you that love you. You may not realise it but your friends and your family love you, your colleagues care about you, and even people on the Internet like your Twitter followers, your Instagram friends or whatever, they’re also secretly there on the side-lines cheering you on. So even if you feel awful just know that there are still people out there that love you and care for you and you shouldn’t be afraid to talk about your problems or even just write them down. Get a pet and speak to that because just getting it out in the open can make you realise that it’s not as bad as it seems, there’s always a way out of it and you’ve just got to take the first step, and hopefully documentaries like these will help you do just that.

What did you think of the documentary?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding