I came across a video on YouTube. It was about how Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the character Mario. I am sure all of us have a deep connection with this character (Well, my connection was more with Luigi than Mario and it is a story for some other day). The most prominent feature of him is the Moustache and that reminded me of the ever so famous “Movember”.

Movember is a foundation that was set up to create awareness among the public about men’s health issues. They initially focussed on prostate cancer which, back in those days, had little attention. Growing a moustache during those days was not a ‘thing’. It was not considered trendy and was rather seen as rebellious. So, Adam Garone — the founder of Movember — and his team turned this into an opportunity, and after a year of struggle it turned into a massive campaign for prostate and testicular cancer.

Soon, other campaigns like NoShaveNovember were also catching on. While these were becoming successful, the act of growing a moustache/beard, or not shaving at all, in the month of November started becoming a trend. It was considered ‘cool’ to not shave in this particular month. Lots of selfies used to float around in Facebook and Twitter. But since the past two years, I have been noticing that quite a lot of celebrities and YouTubers have started making more emphasis on men’s health during the month of November. Apart from prostate and testicular cancer, a significant addition to the awareness campaign was mental health.

While that was happening in Australia, US, UK, and other western countries, I was wondering what aspect of that has influenced us. Of course, it was the beard. Every other guy you see would be with a beard in November and posting photos on social networking sites. To be honest, three years ago, even I was doing the same. But last year, I did a bit of research about cancer and shared that information with my friends and family. This year I wanted to share about Mental Health and the research I did blew me away with some shocking statistics!

India has the highest number of suicides in the whole wide world according to a report by WHO. The report also says that the number of suicidal death is more among men than women. When I dove a little deeper into this I found few more shocking facts. The state of Tamilnadu tops the number of suicides in India. Amongst the Tier I cities, the highest number of suicides is in Chennai, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi. The top reasons for suicides are “family problems”, “illness”, “insanity/mental illness”. It is a clear indication that everything boils down to one’s mental ability to cope up with life. India does not have enough numbers in the mental health care workforce. In fact, we only have 0.3 psychiatrists per 1,00,000 of the entire population! Until 2014, it was a punishable offense to commit suicide. You were eligible to be sentenced to jail for a year! Being a country with the highest youth population and such a crisis in mental Health care, we are definitely heading towards disaster.

After so many years, the government of India has finally taken a significant step in mental health care this year with the “Mental Health Care Act 2017”. Briefly put, the act says that a person with mental illness will be treated the same as a person with physical Illness, and shall have the right to lead his life with dignity. Also, the persons with mental illness finally get insurance. Yes! They had no health insurance before (I have linked the reference documents in the post script. You can read in detail about the act, there). While this is an appreciable step towards better mental health, does this act alone fix things? The answer is no. Having a mental illness is still a guilty secret hidden behind closed doors because of the stigma attached to it by the society. This can only be overcome if we talk about it. Let’s face the truth. We men do not talk about our feelings because it is not ‘manly’. We want to be that rigid, sturdy ‘Macho’ man from the 1950s, which isn’t ‘cool’ anymore. You know what is cool? Growing a moustache in the month of November and talking about mental health to everyone!

If you are reading this, take a moment and talk about this to the ‘Macho’ males in your family, and among your friends and colleagues. It might help them take a step forward and ask for help when in need.

P.S: In case you are still wondering about Mario’s moustache, he simply drew it to distinguish the nose in the 8-bit game!