I was diagnosed with PTSD after my daughter was born – dads like me need someone to talk to

If we engage men and boys in the conversation around gender equality and put more effort into finding solutions to the issues that affect them, writes Elliott Rae, we will create a better world for all of us

Having been through the most traumatic experience of my life, I felt it was my duty to get on with it (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I had a call from the school, my son was having a mental health crisis and I had to go and pick him up. But I felt like I couldn’t tell my manager. In my workplace, there’s an unspoken rule that men don’t prioritise family. It’s work first. I picked up my son and joined my next meeting from the car while he was crying in the back seat. No one was aware of what I was dealing with.”

This was from a dad I spoke to a couple of months ago. It’s a common story of how conventional ideas of masculinity still hold strong.

And I can relate to this on a deeply personal level.

When my daughter was born, she was very unwell. She was lifeless and grey, and I’ll never forget the doctors sucking fluid out of her airways with a straw on one side of the room while my wife bled out heavily on the other.

After the birth, we spent some time in neonatal intensive care and special care. After two weeks, we finally got the good news that we could go home from the hospital. My paternity leave had finished, so after a weekend at home as a family and a few days of annual leave, I was back at work with a smile on my face.

But I was broken inside.

Having been through the most traumatic experience of my life, I felt it was my duty to “get on with it”; to show the world that I was OK and that everything was under control. But I was having panic attacks, insomnia and anxiety. I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD.

From that experience I learnt a lot about myself. I asked myself why I didn’t think it was OK to talk to my closest friends and family about what I was going through. And I reflected on what support is available to men and dads as they go through the challenges of life.

Dads are often treated as secondary parents, an attitude that is largely caused and compounded by the UK having one of the least generous paternity leave packages in the whole of Europe. One in five dads don’t take any paternity leave due to financial reasons, and when in the workplace, fathers are twice as unlikely to have their flexible working requests approved as mums are.

In a recent YouGov survey, almost one in five men said they had no close friends. Three in every four suicides are men. One in five men die before the age of 65. Forty per cent of men die before the age of 75. Men are 43 per cent more likely to die from cancer.

Prostate cancer is one of the most diagnosed forms of cancer in the UK, and often it’s diagnosed very late. A dad who came to one of our peer-to-peer sessions spoke about how he was urinating frequently in the night and having unusual pain for months. But he didn’t think it was right to ask for time off work to go to the doctors. He was eventually rushed to hospital and had emergency surgery for late-stage prostate cancer. He is still alive. He was lucky.

In addition, men and boys are more likely to be homeless, to underachieve at school, to be expelled from school, to be murdered, to lose custody of their children after divorce, and to become addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Talking about men’s issues can be met with resistance. In theory, men are the more privileged sex, and hold much of the power. As such, talking about the challenges men face can seem counterintuitive.

When it comes to discussions about gender parity, men are often only invited to talk about what they can do to be better allies to women. Of course, those conversations need to continue, but we also need to find space for men to talk about the challenges in their own lives.

We also urgently need a new progressive model for male success. The lack of one is contributing to many of our young people being influenced by figures like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and other members of the online “manosphere” who are selling a very toxic and harmful brand of masculinity.

Through my work, I know that men and boys have been calling out for help and support.

I presented a documentary last year on BBC One called Becoming Dad. It covered issues around dads’ mental health, work-life balance and masculinity. It was one of the 20 most watched documentaries across the whole BBC network in 2022. I think this shows that, as a society, we are now more open to having a conversation about some of the challenges that men face.

There are also a number of organisations that are working to improve men’s mental health, fatherhood involvement, addiction, homelessness, loneliness and everything in between.

These organisations are offering solutions. How? By providing young boys with positive male role models through mentorship programmes. By going into schools and talking to boys about healthy masculinity, relationships and identity. By creating safe spaces for men to talk in a vulnerable way about the challenges they are facing in their lives, and to receive peer support in doing so.

The Men and Boys Coalition is the umbrella organisation that brings together many of the companies and individuals across the UK who support men and boys. They have partnered with the Men’s Health Forum to campaign for a national men’s health strategy. They need more support from MPs, the mainstream media and all of us to make this happen.

And they do this work with everybody in mind. Yes, men may be the primary audience, but we understand that this is about creating a better world for us all: men, women and children.

So if you read this article and feel moved to action, please engage with organisations that are fighting for gender equality by supporting men and boys.

If we engage men and boys in the conversation around gender equality and put more effort into offering solutions to the issues that affect them, we will create a better world for all of us. We will create healthier and happier men who live longer, spend more time with their children and contribute positively to society.

We are in this together. I have used the terms “men’s issues” and “women’s issues” in this article for clarity of messaging, but these issues affect all of us. They are human issues. This is not a competition, but a shared endeavour.

And if we want to improve things for ourselves, our families, our communities and the next generation, we need to come together and work collectively on the challenges that impact us all.

Here is a list of some of the organisations supporting men and boys.

Elliott Rae is the founder of the parenting platform MusicFootballFatherhood, and curator of the bestselling book DAD