Every June, Men’s Health Month arrives with a familiar and worthy message: get the screening, check the blood pressure, see the doctor you’ve been avoiding. It’s good advice. But after more than twenty years working with boys and men, I’ve come to believe the most dangerous health problem many men carry never shows up on a chart. It is the weight they refuse to set down, and the fact that they carry it alone.
Walk through any neighborhood in Falls Church or the wider Northern Virginia area and you’ll pass men who, by every outward measure, are fine. They show up to work. They coach the team, fix the fence, pay the bills. And a striking number of them are quietly running on empty: stressed, isolated, and convinced that admitting as much would make them less of a man.
The numbers are sobering. Men in this country die by suicide at nearly four times the rate of women, and account for close to four in five suicide deaths. Men are less likely to have close friends they confide in, less likely to seek counseling, and more likely to cope in ways that cost them: overwork, drinking, a temper that flares and then hardens into shame. None of that is weakness. Much of it is simply what they were taught. Handle it. Don’t complain. Keep moving.
Here is what I see up close. The man whose temper keeps flaring at home is rarely upset about the small thing that set him off. For many men, anger is the one feeling they were ever allowed to express, so everything underneath finds its way out the same way. The father who cannot seem to connect with his kids is not cold. He never had it modeled for him, and he is afraid of getting it wrong. The young man drifting between jobs is not lazy. He is lost, and he has no one to tell. Underneath the surface, it is almost always the same thing: a man who needs to talk and does not know that he is allowed to.
The good news is that this can change, and it does not require a man to fall apart first. In my experience, the turning point is rarely a dramatic breakthrough. It is quieter than that. It is a man sitting in a room with other men, discovering that the thing he was sure made him uniquely broken is something nearly everyone else in the room has felt too. Isolation tells a man he is the only one. Connection tells him the truth.
So this Men’s Health Month, I would offer a few things worth doing.
If you are a man reading this, take stock honestly. Not just your cholesterol, but your connection. Who do you actually talk to? When did you last say something true to another person? Asking for help is not the opposite of strength. For a lot of us, it is the harder, braver version of it.
If you love a man who seems fine, check on him anyway. “How are you, really?” is a small question that can open a large door. You do not have to fix anything. You only have to be willing to hear the answer.
And if you are worried about someone, or about yourself, help is closer than it feels. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available any time, by call or text, for anyone who is struggling or supporting someone who is.
We tend to treat men’s health as a checklist of body parts. But a man’s health is also his relationships, his sense of direction, and his willingness to be honest about how he is actually doing. Those things do not improve by accident. They improve when a man stops carrying it alone, and when a community decides that it is worth talking about.
That is the work I care about, right here in Falls Church. This month is as good a time as any to start.
John F. Crownover is the founder of Men Talking, a coaching and emotional wellness practice in the City of Falls Church serving men across Northern Virginia. He holds a master’s in Child, Youth & Families and is a Certified Family Life Educator, Qualified Mental Health Professional, and Certified Anger Management Specialist. Reach him at john@realmentalking.com or realmentalking.com, or subscribe to his newsletter, Letters from the Circle, at mentalking.substack.com.
