For Movember, a month-long campaign about Mens' mental health, we sat down with the Students' Union's Communities and Development Manager, Jacob Pepper, a keen advocate for positive fixes for mental health - especially within men - to talk through Mens' mental health and what we can do to improve the situation.

How would you describe the state of Mens' Mental Health generally today?

It’s a hard question to answer because of the nature of the problem. The statistics are pretty scary but in reality, that’s probably the tip of the ice burg because we as blokes can so often struggle to talk about how we’re feeling. As a culture, we’ve spent so long portraying masculinity in this super one dimensional way that we’ve almost been hard wired to supress our emotions, especially around other men, and that can quite often mean that we don’t acknowledge how we feel until breaking point. That said, I think that over the past few years, campaigns like Movember have done a class job in normalising the conversation.

What can we do to improve mens health?

I think on an individual level, it’s about creating as many opportunities as we can for the lads in our lives to chat in a way that they feel comfortable and feel like they can be honest. Sitting someone down and being like “lets talk about your mental health” is pretty scary for anyone but asking open and gentle questions around things that might be difficult like uni stresses, relationships or other stressors in a way that seems organic and in environments that that person feels comfortable in is often a good shout

What needs to change systemically

The biggest two things are probably normalising the conversation from an early age in schools so that we can avoid habits that damage us when we’re older and also resourcing mental health provision more effectively. Imagine if every person who interacted with a student over the course of a day whether they were a lecturer or a security member had the skills to identify whether someone was having a bad time and get them to someone that could help. That’d be game changing!