Lifeline’s Toolkit for men experiencing difficult times provides some practical information about:

• Understanding some common causes of difficult times for men.
• Recognising the signs of stress and strain.
• Developing some strategies for what men can do to get through tough times.
• Where to go for help.

Introduction to the toolkit

Everyone experiences difficult times in their life. Sometimes these experiences don’t go away and we struggle to solve them on our own. They impact on our work, our relationships with family and friends and our general sense of wellbeing. It is important to seek help during these difficult times as eventually they can have a serious impact on our physical, emotional and mental health.

Most men draw upon their strong determination and strength of character when dealing with difficult times. These strengths of being resilient, capable, reliable and coping under enormous stress can also be the same reasons men often don’t seek mental health support, or general health care. This is especially apparent early in their experience of a crisis, highlighting a range of reasons why men tend to use indirect sources of help such as talking to a friend or mate. The general misconception that seeking more formal sources of help is a show of weakness reinforces the reasons why men often struggle to get personal support. This can be even more so for men in rural areas where communities are smaller and social networks are intertwined and privacy is reduced.

Conditions in rural Australia especially in times of drought also have a major impact on men’s mental health. Rural men in particular struggle to acknowledge that they are experiencing problems and/or distress and resist seeking help, choosing often to ‘suffer in silence’.

Download it

The toolkit is available for download from Lifeline’s Mental Health Resource Centre webpage, or from this site.

You can Download the booklet [ 223 Kb], or simply view it below.