Movember - Men's Mental Health

Things to bear in mind when your friend seeks your help.

Living far from home is not easy. Upon spending one year in the foundation college before coming to Adelaide, I sometimes felt that university life could be tricky for maintaining my mental health.

It was around this time when I found Movember, the annual movement in November that focuses on raising awareness of men's mental health, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer.

Although the Movember movement mainly focuses on men's mental health, many techniques explained in the movement are useful for everyone. They can help to not only seek help and overcome challenges but also to support those who may be struggling.

There are different ways to support this campaign. Movember Conversations is a tool that you can use to develop your confidence for having conversations with others in your life who are going through tough times. This tool promotes a simple, proven, and helpful guide with you to reaching out to those people by teaching you how to ask, listen, encourage action, and check in.  

I long believed that I could deal with most of the mental health problems that my friends were having by having chats with them. However, most of the time, I realized that these conversations could end up putting a lot of pressure on me. Presumably, I was not in the right position to give them any piece of advice as well.

If you ever need help from someone, remember the university provides free access to counselling which can be found at: access counselling. Also, attending one of the mental health first aid sessions which are free as a university student is a great way to gain confidence and upskill to help others. At the end of the day, because your mental health is the highest priority, you want to seek help from professionals to further develop your skills to support others.