Pain support group for men only

04/07/17 . Partners

The human male is a finely-tuned machine, honed to hard driving, heavy drinking and DIY dallying perfection.

Or that's what we like to think. A minor cold is a disaster - as undermining to the slickly drilled performance of the Man as a blister on the big toe to Andy Murray. But if something genuinely serious comes along, it's a different story. Especially when it comes to pain. You may be in agony but you ain't telling anyone about it. No, sir. I'd rather admit to a penchant for cross-stitch.

So a new pain relief initiative from Canada, where one in five live with chronic pain, is a real innovation. Funded through Movember, the Chronic Pain Support Group of Montreal, is running a pilot men-only pain support group.

One of the members is Richard Hovey. He was pain researcher at McGill University but admits now that he really didn't have a clue until a cycling accident left him in chronic pain himself. He says of the group: 'What I learned through my pain experience and being around these gentlemen is that your perception of yourself changes quite dramatically and that's the hardest part. The pain itself is not necessarily the worst part. It's what it does to your life. It's the suffering of loss, of identity, work, friendships, socializing.'

Read more and listen to a radio feature

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.

Support us

Support us