According to the American Psychological Association, 30.6% of men say they’ve suffered from depression at one point in their lives. However, only one out of four men have actually spoken to a mental health professional. While many men struggle with depression, it can seem like a daunting task to speak up and talk about the things you’re feeling. Knowing this, Elizabethtown College Area Coordinator for Myer and Ober Halls Eugene Thomas decided to put together an event that would help students in the Etown community “find common ground in a therapeutic experience of talking about their feelings.”
Thomas got the idea for the event while lying in bed. “I wasn’t having the best day and I was like, ‘you know what? What can I do to make me feel better?’” After thinking for a bit, he finally came up with the idea to put a program together. Since he was struggling with it that day, Thomas thought it would be best to put together a panel to help discuss mental health. “I’m in therapy now and it’s really helpful to have had a therapist who can really talk to me and how much that meant to me, so I was like, ‘what if I could make a program that can at least provide others with at least building that confidence to talk about their feelings and how they feel?’”
With the idea starting to take a life of its own, Thomas began coming up with questions to help give the program a direction. The direction that he had chosen was a program that would ultimately help build a community that would allow for trauma informed conversations instead of discussions that focused on trauma response. The result from that day in bed: Cry Like A Man, a program that focuses on men and male identified people being able to open up and be honest about their emotions.
While the event was primarily meant for men and those that identify as male, anyone was able to attend and have an open conversation on the struggles of mental health. The event, which took place in the Tempest Theater, lasted two hours and allowed attendees to listen to the panel’s answers and experiences dealing with their mental health. The panel was made up of different members of the College community who shared how they handle their mental health. After the panel spoke, those in attendance were able to ask questions and get advice on how to deal with their own mental health struggles.
What Thomas hopes those who attended were able to take away is confidence. “I want to be able to have people build confidence in themselves to go and talk to somebody if they’re not feeling their best,” Thomas said. “If they feel like, ‘oh I’m struggling and I don’t know where to go or who to talk to,’ that they can at least take that first step and say, ‘hey, this is what I’m dealing with, this is what I’m feeling, can I talk to you?’”
Continuing this thought, Thomas couldn’t stress enough about how important confidence is when it comes to opening up about mental health. He continued, “I think the biggest thing is confidence, more than anything I feel like having the confidence to say like you’re not okay and you’re willing to get help I think would be a good first step.”
While he would like to see the Cry Like A Man program continue, Thomas says that even a therapeutic space would be beneficial to both students and faculty. “Albeit, yes my target audience is men and male identified people, but I want everyone to be able to learn from the experience,” Thomas said. “I know that men typically struggle with mental health and talking about it, so I want to create that platform.”
If you or anyone else is struggling with mental health, appointments can be made with Etown Counseling Services at the Baugher Student Center Suite 216.
