- Suicide cases, with mental disorders being a major trigger, are affecting more Kenyan men than women.
- Things went haywire long ago and need redemption.
- The role of ensuring one another’s mental wellness is on everyone’s shoulders.
Much as you’re growing through empowerment, grow to help us so that your empowerment will not turn to a threat against men
Dr. Walter Okibo, Boy Child Champion.
Though many have undertaken to escalate conversations around mental health and empowerment, the better part of the voices has been towards solving women’s issues.
Most conferences, wellness talks, support and concern, and input from governmental and non-governmental organizations have been directed toward women.
Actually, the idea of gender empowerment, though initially meant to accommodate both genders, has become an avenue of women empowerment instead.
Nevertheless, men’s mental health remains an evergreen topic requiring more vigor to connect the dots on why more men are staggering into mental disorders and burst the bubble on what must be done to redeem them.
On Sunday, April 23, 2023, A Million Hugs, a mental health and community empowerment organization promoting mental health among individuals and communities, held a safe space to tackle the issue of Men’s Mental Health.
In context
Attended by physiotherapists, doctors, students, musicians, and other people pursuing career paths, the conversation sought to solve the puzzle behind men’s mental wellbeing.
The presence of both men and women, all willing to divide the lessons and enlighten one another, testified how people value mental health and are eager to tackle related matters when the space is safe.
Tracing the misstep
The disconnect between men’s and women’s empowerment and the change of focus of gender empowerment to, instead, largely solve girls’ and women’s issues, according to Dr. Walter Okibo, gained impetus when men’s groups were banned in Kenya in the early 1990s.
Digging deeper into the genesis of things falling apart for men, he pointed out that women, in the reasoning that they will not fight for resources as did men, were allowed to unite, form women-only groups and raise their voices about things affecting them.
Typically, this uplifted women and lowered men, though they equally needed help.
Worth noting is that Dr. Okibo, who was the mental health event’s guest speaker, is a trained Mental Wellness Champion and by choice and passion, a Boy Child Champion and Advocate since 2013.
The main aim of this decision was that “… the boy should not be forgotten, even as we rally resources behind empowering the girl child,” he said.
Dr. Okibo says that the conversation behind empowering the boy child as well is anchored on three paramount principles:
- Biblical/Spiritual responsibility: The man has been given the responsibility of being above the woman and leading the way in spiritual and family aspects, loving the wife and receiving respect from her in return.
- Biological responsibility: Man is biologically wired to be a leader, a man, and a role model.
- Cultural responsibility: All communities, cultures, and societies attribute physical strength, ability, and stewardship to man first.
These aspects make him worthy of being held in high esteem, and his mental health and balance are critical.
A distorted idea altogether
“When we talk about gender, why does it have to insinuate we are referring to women?” he wondered, highlighting how the tables have turned over time and put men on the edge.
History and research have it that nearly 95% of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) set to handle gender issues focus on the girl child and women issues.
Initiatives, plans, resources and policies have been enacted to support the girl such that when you talk of the Boy Child, it sounds like waging war against the Girl Child!
“As ladies, when building ourselves, we should know and appreciate that we need the boy child,” he implored, adding that at no point can we chide men’s responsibility and its trio-faceted nature.
The ripple effect
Dr. Okibo introduced men’s mental health into the map by explaining that as the society and all voices, including those of many men, have been supporting the girls and women, the boys and men have been continually made to feel inferior, ostracized, and in an alien world altogether.
“After the boy child feels humiliated and secluded, he coils at the corner, watching and digesting the meaning of the entire experience,” he said.
This has become one of the reasons boys and men turn to drugs and substance abuse, sink into depression, become solitudinarians, normalize gender-based violence (which again has been distorted to mean against-women-only violence), and chase after ill-advised decisions for an escapade.
Though this is not an excuse for their choices, it has become the situation, and that is why safe spaces and more conversations handling men’s mental wellbeing are more vital now than ever.
World Health Organization data shows that in Kenya, 421 people, on average, commit suicide annually, more of them being men. For example, of the 421 suicide cases in 2017, 330 involved men. Many more are never reported, sadly.
During the conversation, it surfaced that men need as much help as women, and it was clear that it is everyone’s responsibility to redeem the men and bring them back from the forest.
“Much as you’re growing through empowerment, grow to help us so that your empowerment will not turn to a threat against men,” Dr. Okibo urged the women present.
Changing the narrative
Opening the forum to everyone for input, the meet-up also acknowledged that society and culture have painted a tainted image of man—someone who should be ashamed of crying, opening up, and sharing his predicaments.
“But, are we providing a safe space for men to cry without judging them and tagging them weak?” wondered Oswago Kiminyu, Secretary General Kisii National Polytechnic, and Founder and CEO, Phan Charity Africa, an organization empowering girls.
Donah Onguti, a physiotherapist at the Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital (KTRH) and member of the Roundtable Wellness Foundation, called upon men to a point of vulnerability, opening up and expressing their emotions without shame.
Interestingly, most women in attendance are young mothers parenting boys and they needed the hacks parents require to nurture empowered boys (and girls).
“Expression takes away depression,” said Ms. Onguti.
Dr. Harrison Mariga of KTRH urged the boy child to combat the situation, urging them to have a close, trusted partner (particularly a man) to share with at the thick of things.
“If you don’t take charge, you will lose it. Stay responsible and when troubled, speak out,” he told the men present.
“Men should stop bottling up their emotions. Instead, allow them come around you, reason with them and let them move out in a healthy manner,” said Dr. Mary Njuguna, a psychiatrist and Kisii County Mental Health Focal Person.
Explaining that emotions are e-motions and thus ever in motion, she added, “You are not your emotions, but just a medium for them to pass through.”
She commended the effort by A Million Hugs to restore mental wellness to people and expressed the need to engage younger boys in the conversation about men’s mental health.
Jairus Kibagendi, a psychologist, Founder of A Million Hugs, and the convener, underscored the underlying need to redeem the aspect of manhood for men and build a mindset of empowered men.
“If we empower the men and restore their dignity, it will make women’s submission automatic,” he noted.
According to Duncan Ondieki, one of the participants, more boys and men are getting deeper into the forest.
Seeking help, when they find almost everyone leading the gender-based NGOs is a female, it becomes a tall order for them to open up.
Also note that more legislative structures and affirmative action guidelines lean toward buttressing the girl, seldom the boy.
Mrs. Alice Kibagendi called upon young men to make friends with their parents.
“More than often, your parents will support you,” she assured, calling out absent fathers for misleading their boys because the youngsters lack an ever-present role model.
One another’s warm shoulder
The participants agreed that in the family setting, it is essential that each supports the other in different aspects.
The conversation handled the shaky and debatable subject of who should be first to further their education at the family if both need to.
It returns to the man’s spiritual, biological, and cultural responsibilities and requires support and understanding.
But what are the men, who are now being defended, doing? Are they lobbying behind and supporting one another, or do they need defense in absentia?
That has been the central impediment men need to overcome, support one another, hold hands in unity, raise their voices, and handle the many challenges bedeviling them.
Way forward
The participants agreed that change starts with you and me.
We need to nurture men to be the kind of people we want them to be.
“The boy child is consistently suffering and has been neglected,” noted Kiminyu, supporting the need to empower and support the boy as the girl.
They concurred that men’s mental health is at stake and asked more men to come up and support men-based initiatives, conversations, and projects to redeem men’s dignity and nurture a crop of mentally empowered boys to be strong men through role modeling.
“We have empowered the men, but have we taught the men to live with empowered women?” enquired Ondieki.
In his championship for the boy child, Dr. Okibo partners with like-minded individuals and initiatives, escalating the conversation in schools and other spaces to save the situation.
Such include the Roundtable Wellness Foundation and the Role Modelling initiative.
“When they go to empower the girl child, I go with them to empower the boy child and be his role model,” he says.
The congregation approved that we all need to make gender empowerment more inclusive, have men and women supporting the boys just as they are supporting the girls, and that we must work as a team, with nobody fighting or downplaying the other.
“We need to change with the moments,” said Dr. Okibo, urging the women not to approach empowerment as an avenue to replace men, and the men not to feel threatened.
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After all, “A woman’s biggest enemy is another woman, and the opposite is as true,” he posed.
Harmonizing the entire conversation stands paramount.
