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Some facts about men’s health are fairly well known:
To accompany today's International Men’s Day debate in Parliament, here are five surprising facts that are less well known – and some suggestions on the policy implications at flow from them:
The figures are shocking. 19% of men in England, in Wales and Northern Ireland – and 22% of men in Scotland die before they retire. There are also huge inequalities between men. The highest life expectancy for newborn baby boys in 2012-14 was 83.3 in Kensington & Chelsea. The lowest was 73.3 in Glasgow – 10 years earlier.
You might expect, given this gap, that men’s health would be thoroughly investigated in every area and an action plan put in place. But our 2015 report on local authority Joint Strategic Needs Assessments showed that only 18% adequately recorded information by gender.
Campaigners such as CALM have rightly highlighted that suicide is the biggest cause of death for men under 45.
But it’s important not to forget older men. The peak age group for death from suicide is actually 45-49. There are almost as many deaths from suicide amongst men over the age of 50 as there are for men under 45.
According to a review by the Samaritans in 2012, there are some key factors that can increase the risk of suicide including:
Personality traits may interact with these factors to increase the risk of suicide.
Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women. Only 36% of referrals to IAPT (Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies) are men.
Find out more about How to make mental health services work for men - our guide to the latest research produced in collaboration with the Movember Foundation and the Leeds Beckett University Centre for Men's Health.
Our latest stats on men's health are here.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer amongst men and the cancer that causes most deaths amongst men over 85. But men are 37% more likely to die from cancer overall – and 67% more likely to die than women from the cancers that men and women share (excluding sex-specific cancers and breast cancer):
The exception is breast cancer which still affects women in far greater numbers. But it is increasing amongst men. Last year, more men in England and Wales died of breast cancer (74) than testicular cancer (55).
Much more research is needed. You can find out more from our report Men and Cancer: Saving Lives.
Diabetes isn’t often thought of as a particularly male health problem. But men are more likely to get it, twice as likely to suffer complications such as foot ulcers, more likely to require an amputation and twice as as likely to die prematurely. And there’s surprisingly little research into why this is.
One increasing risk factor is that men and boys are now more likely to be overweight or obese than women and girls at every age – from Reception year at school through to adulthood.
The Men’s Health Forum is working with Diabetes UK and the Department of Health to get action.
Find out more about about our work on the male diabetes crisis and, if you can help, please sign-up to support our work on it.
Men do go to the doctor just as much as women – as soon as they retire. The big gap is in working age – and a key factor is that men are justifiably concerned about taking time off work for mental health problems.
In the 2016 GP Patient Survey, retired men were as likely to have seen their GP as retired women. Amongst people working full-time, 37% of men had seen their GP in the past 3 months compared to 53% of women. Excluding ‘reproductive events’ closes the gap a degree but that doesn’t explain the whole difference.
Men’s Health Forum research shows that a major factor is reluctance to take time off work – particularly for mental health issues. And it's a fear that may well be justified.
A third - 34% - of working-age men would be embarrassed or ashamed to take time off work for mental health issue such as anxiety or depression compared to only 13% for a physical injury. Over half of men with mental health problems – 52% – were concerned that their employer would think worse of them.
This comes on top of men's reluctance to take time off work for medical problems anyway. In the same survey, 30% of men wouldn't take time off work for blood in their urine, 40% wouldn't for an unexpected lump and 42% wouldn't for chest pain. For "feeling low or down", 85% wouldn't take time off work and for anxiety, 81%.
A recent report from the EHRC suggests that men are right to be worried about their employers knowing about their mental health issues. Men with mental health problems can earn 42% less.
That’s one reason the Men’s Health Forum calls for greater access to mental health services outside so-called ‘normal’ opening hours.
By no means. Our 2014 Men’s Health Manifesto lays out a comprehensive action plan for men’s health. You can easily access it here.
If you're interested in our latest stats on men's health, they're here.
If you want to support our work, please donate, buy some Man Manuals or sign up for news.
The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can. |