Suicide and Wales. Men are talking, but is anyone listening?

Stephen Price

Before joining the Nation.Cymru team, I would submit articles to the Editor, purely for the joy of writing or to put some deep seated gripe out there.

From Welsh road signs to benefits, to Wales’ housing crisis and more, Nation.Cymru offered a platform for a skill while on something of a career break.

Dog walking and sitting occupied my time, and almost filled my pockets, in those days, and one piece that I began, but didn’t submit, came about following the news that a young lad from my small village had killed himself.

I researched how to write such a piece responsibly with the correct charity-approved media guidelines – what to say, how to say it, how to end the article with calls to action for anyone out there that might be in need of a shoulder.

And for every moment from the first word to the last, I wrote with tears streaming down my face.

In the end, I shelved the piece.

I worried that it would find its way to the boy’s family. I worried that it was too soon. I also worried that certain lines I wrote were too personal, too ‘confessional’. Too unlike me.

Even now, I’m questioning myself. Am I saying too much?

Lost connections

Without going into any detail, and I do not exaggerate, here – I’ve lost count of the number of players in my life that have lost their lives to suicide.

From close childhood friends, to faces vividly recalled from school, to parents of friends, partners of friends, friends of friends.

For someone with an ever-contracting circle of friends, whose primary school had 52 children at its peak, this is surely disproportionate for a man of 41? Or is this just how it is in Wales?

Just last month, the tears came again when news hit me that the partner of a childhood friend and former colleague had taken his life. I found out through Facebook.

I saw her only last week and held her in the street. What else could I do?

The same month, news reached me of the death of a young man a few years older than me, from the tiny village next door to my own, a face I recall from school vividly, another statistic. Again, through Facebook, and not through community voices and conversation – a telling canary in the mine.

And what connects most of these?

All young men. All men I’d never have thought for a moment weren’t happy, thriving, beautiful, vital souls.

And all of them, with loved ones left behind. Broken. Lost. Hurting. 

For how long? A lifetime I imagine.

Numbers on a page

This week, the ONS released shocking statistics on male suicide in Wales and England. Few read between the lines with the statistics, but yet again Wales’ figures were higher than England’s.

And those figures are so worryingly high – a 25 year high in fact – but we talk about those deaths in cold numerical detail. We don’t talk about the tens, indeed hundreds, of people impacted by each lost individual.

Again, as I write, I’m walking a line. Do I talk about my own mental health? What would it mean for me if I did, to have a label attached?

And this is the problem for so many men – we all too often don’t talk. Not to each other, not to our partners and not to our families.

We have lost our communities and lost our connections, and therein, maybe just maybe, might lie the problem.

In some of the cases I allude to above, one might argue that drugs and alcohol played a central role in the mental health issues of those wonderful, beloved, NEEDED young men.

But, much like their final, undoable acts, we are often afraid to ask what pushed them to those avenues – whether that might be undiagnosed mental health issues, abuse, financial worries, unemployment, even undiagnosed ADHD – we just don’t know, and we just don’t talk about it.

And when we do talk about it we act like it’s all taking place in a vacuum.

It’s because of X, or Y, or Z. But we only know about that one final straw. Or we guess. And for the lucky ones out there, we don’t even need to know – they’re just numbers on a screen.

It’s good to act

In the blink of an eye, the role men have played in our communities has changed. Our positions have changed, our once-physically challenging roles, indeed lives, are now mentally infuriating. We’ve gone from working with our hands to working out our place. 

Our friends and family, once on our doorsteps, are spread across the country and, indeed, the world.

And there are a multitude of reasons, and sometimes no reasons. But each and every lost life that has been reduced to a statistic takes with them so much irreplaceable potential, so much love.

I don’t have any answers, but I feel called to use my own voice to do more than reiterate the usual line of ‘just talk’. Because that’s the thing with men’s health and suicide – recalling the faces of those I know to have taken their own lives, and those who died young who we just don’t talk about – they all hid their pain behind smiles. And others will continue to do the same.

I have a problem with the ‘just talk’ line, too, because there are men in Wales that are talking, that have talked, but here we are with statistics higher than they have been for decades.

What, then, is the answer?

The people of Wales, and especially those in power in Wales, must do more to address the ‘why’ behind the figures.

This is a crisis like no other, and one that exists against a backdrop of cuts to mental health services and a continuing cost of living crisis. 

Seeds of our disconnect are sown in every corner of our land – the industries that formed the backbones of our communities have been lost, our community bonds are fragmenting – whether it’s closed village schools, town halls, pubs, doctors surgeries with human beings that pick up the phone and welcome with a smile, along with countless other tangible and intangible pieces that bind us as a people.

Social fabrics switched overnight for screen time, weekend contact with kids, abandoned relationships, a housing crisis, lost connections to our very land, our communities and even the outdoor world.

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I have as many answers and guesses as the next person, and there’s little I can do but share my despair, and my hurt, and my hope that people I know and care for don’t have to worry that they might be next to carry hurt for decades to come.

This ongoing national emergency has been swept under the carpet for too long now, and those we vote into positions of both power and responsibility have a duty to step up and do more – to work with organisations that are bringing men’s voices forward. And to listen to those men that have plucked up the courage to talk. Their voices speak for those who are no longer able to.

Enough of them have said what they might have needed when they were at their lowest points, but is anyone listening?

To anyone hurting, please do reach out for that help.

Broken people can, and do mend. Especially if they have people around them, both in their lives, and in power, that are listening.

Helpu has put together a comprehensive directory of organisations across Wales that can help anyone in crisis: https://helpu.org.uk

When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [email protected], or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.