Pretoria - Mental health experts say the deaths of local celebrities such as veteran actor Patrick Shai and rapper Riky Rick through suicide are just the beginning of the implications of delaying conversations around mental health for the past 20 years.
Johannesburg-based clinical psychologist Zamo Mbele said the conversation around mental health for men was a conversation that was long overdue.
Mbele said it was most unfortunate that the country was once again only having the conversations due to the consequences of not speaking about it rearing its ugly head.
He said in fact the consequences of not speaking about it had manifested in many ways through the years and have been showing themselves in the amount of domestic violence, road rage experienced and the gross hike of substance abuse witnessed.
"Much damage has already been done and it feels like in order to turn this ship around we need to first begin to take stock of the implications of not having spoken about this 20 years before and how it's showing itself, then we can start to speak about helping and building healthy men."
Mbele said if anything one of the reasons there appeared to be an increase in cases currently, was not necessarily because men were only starting to struggle now, but rather due to the fact that men and other people who had previously not accessed help were beginning to access help as they recognised that they needed to get help.
"They are starting to see that the expression of their mental or emotional difficulties is no longer functional to them or society."
"It's no longer as socially acceptable to be violent in order to deal with your depression or have a big temper, or irritability in order to deal with the anxiety. It's becoming frowned upon to drink excessively in order to deal with those issues or spending copious amounts at the gym to avoid dealing with that."
Dr Frans Korb, a psychiatrist with the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag), added that the problem was not one-sided but rather spoke to a social problem that needed to be addressed by professionals, the public, government and everyone in the country.
Korb also made reference to a recent survey published where he said they looked at several countries worldwide in terms of what the country's mental state is, with South Africa coming out as the worst of all the countries surveyed.
He said for their organisation it was daunting how they went from handling between 400 to 600 calls per day on their helplines before the start of the pandemic to averaging well over 2000 calls per day since the beginning of Covid-19.
Korb said in his opinion providing education, eradicating stigma, and providing access to mental health facilities were most important in beginning to tackle the burden of mental health in the country.
"In fact, we should stop saying it's a mental illness and simply say illness as we now know there are lots of biological things that also come into play. It's an illness like any other disease and by calling it mental illness we keep putting it in this stigmatising block."
"The truth is It does not skip anyone irrespective of you being male, female, whatever age, education level or financial status."
The two experts were speaking during a webinar on destigmatising men's mental health organised by the Government Communication and Information System in partnership with Sadag.
Pretoria News