In its last day of crowdfunding, HIM + HIS, an anthology of visual and written contributions exploring the strengths and weaknesses of men and mental health, needs your help to get published.

““Unfortunately I’ve been going through a bit of a relapse over the last 2 weeks. My depression has gone back to unmanageable levels and I’ve been really struggling to function. But I am still really interested in being involved in your project. Actually my most recent setback has made me realise just how important a project like yours is. I find that writing about my experience is really therapeutic. Fortunately for me I now have an amazing support structure in place. But so many men are suffering in silence and on their own for no good reason.””

It is silence that breeds pain. It is silence that is the biggest killer. And silence that HIM + HIS is rebuking.

From a young age, men are taught to be strong - and strength is demonstrated not through words, but actions. Expression is undesired, the taboo, adverse to productivity. Emotions are hindrances, feelings a burden – you must ‘BE A MAN!’

Yet, like this contributor expressed: community is crucial and acceptance basic. We must not shunt, but applaud growth and healing. Creating and creation should continue an ever essential openness towards men and their mental health.

HIM + HIS is an exploration of what identity means for the male. Him, signifying his physical being, and His, symbolising the mind, and the journey to acquiring individual power and possession over one’s mental state.

The book consists of many versions of voice, of both visual and written contributions; a collection of poems, letters, illustrations, photography, interviews, short stories and even the skeleton of a screenplay. All contributions have been welcome; whether you are man yourself, and have suffered from mental health issues and mental illness, or whether you are the family or friend, like myself, who have watched their loved ones eaten alive by their minds.

After my twin brother was diagnosed with psychosis and clinical depression, myself and my family looked for comfort in the situation and found little. Working within the health care system, as much as they have helped, has caused trauma rather than easing the pain of having a loved one sectioned in an institution. He has now been in a psychiatric ward for young adults since January 2017, the longest he has ever been sectioned.

During his time there, I have been able to speak to his fellow inpatients about their mental health, illness and what they feel were the issues leading to their sectioning.

The majority of young men responded, saying that it was actually the normal and the everyday constraints of society that infringed on their mental health. It was the normative expectations of sexuality, of masculinity, and the fear of not fulfilling the 'role' of the man that pushed their already fragile minds to mental illness.

The problematic discourse around men and mental health reinforces the prejudice and stereotypes in place that drag the male self and ego into the ground - vulnerability and fragility framed as a defect and a weakness. Mental health is often accompanied with unfavourable language that fuels suppression, denial and destruction of yourself and those around you.

Although men and mental health is being addressed more and more by professionals and the media, many men are still reluctant to seek help and signs of distress are often left undiagnosed until it is too late. These approaches are found by many men to be inaccessible, forced and patronising. In the UK alone, only 15-19% of men would seek help from their GP for anxiety or depressive tendencies; and only 36% of referrals to IAPT (Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies) are men.

My cousin passed away last July, after committing suicide. He was in his 40's, a charismatic, loving father, friend and brother, yet could not find support and comfort even in his own family. He now makes up a statistic: 75% of all suicides in the UK are by men. Every week 84 men in the UK take their own lives.

This is their story, and my transferred pain. For all of us: our mental states are forever changing and it is this sporadic uncertainty that is sometimes the most overwhelming – the extremity of being never certain of the next high or low.

I am looking for HIM + HIS to be a longstanding platform and forum for men of all ages and backgrounds to discuss and share their feelings of themselves and of life, to celebrate both the highs and the lows; championing both their strengths and their weaknesses.

Hopefully with this type of support network, we will not have to rely on sedation and medication, but instead on emotional openness and communication. I hope only that HIM + HIS is more than paper, providing some sort of comfort for sufferers and their families. For it to be a platform to speak honestly, however dark; remaining a journal of hope that whilst things may not get better, they are manageable and accepted.