Secure Man

The manual for men in secure institutions.

One man in five will die before he reaches 65, two in five before the age of 75. Not with Secure Man, a new physical health guide for men with mental health challenges requiring hospital care.

Developed by the Men’s Health Forum in partnership with Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT), service-users at the Trust’s medium-secure units the Reaside Clinic and Tamarind Centre were involved at all stages of the production process.

The 36-page full-colour A5 manual includes:

How to boost life expectancy through healthy eating and physical exercise

  • Taking care of your heart
  • Healthy eating advice and how to balance your diet
  • Physical activity and top exercise tips
  • Information about safe sex
  • Smoking cessation advice

All the tips, which were put together with the men at Reaside, are realistic and practical even for men living in institutions where healthy eating and exercise may be more difficult.

This 36 page full colour A5 booklet, written by Jim Pollard with additional text by Dr Nick Tarrant and Dr Rebekah Bourne and cartoons by John Byrne is full of simple, practical tips that will improve the health of pretty much anyone. Edited by Jim Pollard. 

Secure Man: a healthy body powers a healthy mind. 

Read Secure Man

 

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.

Registered with the Fundraising Regulator