The Men’s Health Forum organises Men’s Health Week each year. The week aims to raise awareness of men’s health and to encourage all men to seek help to address any health concerns that they may be experiencing. We believe that there is no health without mental health, and we wholeheartedly advocate for everyone seeking help when they need it. We do this by raising awareness of mental health, encouraging everyone to start the conversation about mental health and thereby help to address the stigma that surrounds it.
This years theme is: Men don't talk, we're told.
So for Men's Health Week 2024 we're encouraging men to share their stories. We're taking our lead from King Charles who, earlier this year, shared that he had a problem with an enlarged prostate. On the day after his announcement, there were 16,410 visits to the relevant National Health Service website page compared with 1,414 visits the previous day. Prostate Cancer UK saw an almost doubling in the numbers of users of its online risk checker.
This goes to show the difference that honest sharing can make. Most of us won't have the same impact as the King - for a while in the UK media, it was difficult to avoid urologists talking about the prostate and the things that can go wrong with it - but if there is a taboo about men's talking, well , the best way to beat a taboo is to ignore it.