Men don’t cry

Disclaimer: This project was created as part of a university research assignment and is intended for educational purposes only. It is not a real-world or commercial piece and was not developed for sale or public use.

Men don’t cry was a project I created in order to bring awareness to the negative stigma around mental health within men. This zine illustrates how it feels to battle with depression and how lonely and vulnerable it can be and how men often hide their mental health issues due to toxic masculinity in society.

Background

According to the foundation of suicide prevention, Men die by suicide at a rate of 3.54 per cent higher than women in 2017, and the national institute of Alcohol abuse and Alcoholism puts the annual number of men dying due to alcohol-related causes at 36,000 higher than women as well as being two in three more likely to misuse drugs.

Depression is a leading cause of suicide in men and yet they are less likely to seek mental health treatment than any other gender.

Our generation knows so much more about mental health and have come to realise its like any other disease like diabetes and its just as common.

There are so many ways to seek help that its private and confidential, even when things feel tough there is a lot you can do to help yourselves and others so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with:

CALM – MOVEMBER – MAN UP!

Solution

I created a visual zine that illustrates what its like to battle with mental health, its one continuous image that is linked together by a sting that represents your life line. The image can be broken down into events such as panic attacks, therapy, support and others.