With National Stress Awareness Day on the horizon (2nd November) we speak to mental health speaker Richard Abrahams about men’s mental health, how stress can contribute to it, and how to combat these stressors.
Stress and mental health often go hand in hand; although stress is not considered a mental health condition, chronic and long-term stress can contribute to mental health problems and vice-versa. Mental illness can affect people of any gender, but due to societal expectations of masculinity, men are less likely to talk to others about their feelings, so they often suffer in silence.
In 2018, Managing Director of home improvement business Elmhurst, Richard Abrahams, suffered from mental health issues that were a product of the pressures of running his business and the stressors of everyday life. After overcoming his problems, Richard is now passionate about spreading awareness about men’s mental health and encouraging men to speak up before it’s too late.
Richard told us about his personal journey with stress, and how it affected him: “I knew there was something wrong because there was a lot going on within myself, both physically and mentally. As a man we typically tend to brush things under the carpet and pretend they’re not happening. I told myself that there must be something wrong with me physically, which in hindsight was probably me masking it but I never even thought about it being stress related. I saw the doctor and described my symptoms, and they told me that it was anxiety, depression, and general stress. Initially, I said that can’t be the case – I was definitely in denial.”
Stress is inevitable and unfortunately unavoidable in everyday life: “The analogy I was given when I was unwell was that everyone has a so-called stress bucket, we all live with a percentage of stress that’s day-to-day worries such as family issues, paying the bills, and work- related problems. These can be relatively easy to handle so the bucket isn’t always full. However, if you don’t try to de-stress and deal with these things, the stress bucket is at the point of overload and you feel choked, by which time it’s too late.”
Manageable stress is one thing, but stress that gets out of hand is a huge factor to mental health issues. There’s an undeniable link between stress and mental health.
Warning signs that stress is getting unmanageable can take many different forms, whether it’s emotional, physical, cognitive, or behavioural, and a lot of people don’t realise how closely linked they are: “In my case, things came on quicker than I anticipated. The anxiety was spiralling out of control quicker