THE JOURNAL
Illustration by Ms Stefania Infante
Single dad Barrie has just taken part in a group chat facilitated by Fathers Network Scotland, a charity that provides much-needed support to struggling fathers and their families. “I enjoyed it,” he says of the session, “but learning that a guy had taken his own life a couple of weeks ago was hard-hitting. Men need more help.”
That much has become abundantly clear over the past few months. Men’s mental health was already in crisis before the pandemic took hold, a truth underlined by the shocking statistic that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. But the stresses of job loss, home schooling and social isolation brought on by Covid-19 have taken an additional toll. Surveys carried out by Fathers Network Scotland show a worrying deterioration in our wellbeing over the course of Scotland’s two national lockdowns.
Barrie is just one of an increasingly large number of men who have been reaching out to Fathers Network Scotland as a result. “We’ve seen so many more dads getting in touch with us over the past year who are in desperate need of help,” says Ms Kirsty Nicholls, head of marketing, digital and research. Thanks to an extensive network of more than 200 organisations built up over a decade, the charity is able to assess their circumstances individually and point them in the right direction. But it’s no easy task.
“We’re doing everything ourselves,” says Nicholls. “It’s a time-consuming process and these are often urgent situations. I’ve had so many men contact me at crisis point and I’ve had to call the police. The worry – and this is the persistent concern of a lot of small charities working in this sector – is that we might miss somebody.”
“We’ve seen so many more dads getting in touch with us over the past year who are in desperate need of help”
The idea for an app that could expedite this process had been germinating for a few years, says Nicholls, but it took the unprecedented events of last year, and a funding opportunity from the Movember Foundation, to bring it to fruition. In August 2020, in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising need to find new ways to connect with one another, Movember announced its Social Connections Challenge, a callout for technology-based solutions to the issue of social isolation.
In response, Fathers Network Scotland joined forces with two other charities, Shared Parenting Scotland and Held In Our Hearts, to submit the idea for its much-needed app. Using geolocation, it would quickly point men in the direction of local, relevant mental health services. It would also provide access to an anonymous peer support network, which would give them a sympathetic ear in times of distress.
Today, we’re delighted to announce that the funding has been secured – and it’s thanks to donations made to MR PORTER’s Health In Mind Fund, which is powered by Movember, our charity partner.
The app, once developed, will streamline a lot of what Fathers Network Scotland already does, says Nicholls. “So much of our communication is digital, whether over Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. There’s a sense of anonymity to speaking online, which can really help.”
This preference for anonymous communication betrays one of the biggest issues in men’s health, which is our general unwillingness to speak up when we’re suffering. “Something we’ve found is that the dads we work with tend to reach out only once they’re already at their breaking point,” says Nicholls.
“So much of our communication is digital, whether over Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. There’s a sense of anonymity to speaking online, which can really help”
This preference for anonymous communication betrays one of the biggest issues in men’s health, which is our general unwillingness to speak up when we’re suffering. “Something we’ve found is that the dads we work with tend to reach out only once they’re already at their breaking point,” says Nicholls.
This is something that Fathers Network Scotland’s two partner charities experience on a daily basis. Shared Parenting Scotland provides support to families who are going through a divorce or separation, while Held In Our Hearts focuses on helping parents who have suffered the tragic loss of a child. “These are major life events that can really bring a lot of underlying issues to the surface,” says Nicholls. “What we really want is for men to speak up earlier so they never reach that crisis point.”
Crucial to achieving this is making the process of reaching out as quick and easy as possible. By removing some of the barriers to getting help, the hope is that this new app will encourage men to seek help sooner. More than that, though, it’ll free Nicholls and her colleagues from the laborious task of manually signposting fathers towards appropriate mental health services, which will allow them to dedicate more time to their vital advocacy and campaigning work.
“Everything we do is around gender equity,” says Nicholls. “We campaign on flexible working hours and individual parental rights for all parents, whether mothers, fathers or adoptive parents. The goal is that all parents are treated equally, which not only reduces discrimination against women in the workplace, but also allows men to get more involved with their children. It’s for the whole family.”
