If you're having thoughts of suicide right now, please reach out today. In Canada or the US, call or text 988. In Québec, call 1 866 APPELLE (1-866-277-3553) or text 535353. If you're in immediate danger, call 911.
For a long time I didn't call it anything. I didn't even see it. Depression has been part of my life for years, and for most of those years I would have laughed if you'd used the word.
That's pretty common for men, it turns out. Depression in men often doesn't look sad. It looks like irritability and a short fuse, or like exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. It looks like losing interest in things you used to like. And it looks like escape: drinking, drugs, risky stuff, or working until there's no room left to feel anything. Men are less likely to ask for help, and that matters, because most people who die by suicide in Canada are men.
Depression in men often doesn't look sad
HeadsUpGuys, a Vancouver-based men's mental health resource, lists the ways depression tends to show up in men. A few of them:
- Feeling irritable, getting more sensitive to criticism, losing your sense of humour.
- Road rage, a short temper.
- Escapist, numbing or risky behaviour, like drinking, drugs, reckless driving.
- Burying yourself in work or the gym so you don't have to sit with how you feel.
- Sleeping a lot more or a lot less, and feeling exhausted even without doing much.
- Losing interest in things you used to enjoy.
CAMH lists irritability as a symptom of depression, alongside the ones people expect. To count as depression, symptoms have to last more than two weeks and get in the way of your life.
The point is simple. If you're waiting to feel "sad" before you'll admit something is wrong, you might wait a long time. Some men never get to sad. They go straight to angry, or to numb.
What it looked like in me
I'm going to be careful here, because I don't want to rewrite my own history to fit a checklist. But reading that list, a lot of it lands.
Start with the anger. My explosions had a name: robplosions. A friend came up with it nearly 20 years ago, when I was running a web company in Vancouver. I'd lose it on people when problems came up. At the time nobody, including me, would have connected that to depression. I've written a separate post on when anger is really depression, because I think for me the two were tangled together.
Then the escape. Substance use has been part of my life. Some of that, I think, was me trying not to feel things. I haven't touched cocaine or heroin in sixteen years now, but I know what reaching for something to turn the volume down looks like from the inside.
And the work. Intensity was a great place to hide. If I was going flat out, nobody asked how I was. I didn't ask either.
Why men miss it, and why that's dangerous
The Centre for Suicide Prevention in Calgary lays out some of the reasons. Men who are reluctant to ask for help tend to try to handle things alone. Men raised to see emotions as weakness tend to push feelings down until they're overwhelming. Isolation means fewer people around to notice. Heavy alcohol or drug use raises the risk.
Their numbers are stark. In 2019 in Canada, about 3 out of every 4 people who died by suicide were men. Men aged 45 to 64 had the highest number of suicides of any group. I'm in my mid-fifties. That's my bracket.
I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'm telling you because the "suck it up" approach costs lives, and because there's another side to it. In 1998 I tried to take my own life. I'm still here, decades later, because at different points I got help. Depression is treatable. People get better from it all the time, including men who were sure they were the exception.
If you're the one who's worried about a man in your life, the same signs apply. The post on how to help someone who is thinking about suicide is a good place to start.
What actually helps
Saying it out loud to one person. A partner, a friend, a doctor, anyone. It doesn't have to be a big speech. "I don't think I'm okay" is enough. If you don't know how to start, see how to tell someone you're thinking about suicide. It works for "I'm depressed" too.
A quick self-check. HeadsUpGuys has a short depression check. It's not a diagnosis, but it can give you something concrete to bring to a doctor, which helps a lot if you're the type who downplays things in the appointment.
A doctor or a psychologist. Depression has real treatments, therapy and sometimes medication. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about the medication side. In Québec, if you don't have a doctor, call Info-Social 811 or go through a CLSC. Relief, formerly Revivre, is Québec's main organization for depression and has a phone line and self-management groups.
Looking hard at the escape. If you're using alcohol or drugs to cope, the depression and the substance use usually need to be treated together. That's called dual diagnosis, and I wrote about it in addiction plus everything else.
Not doing it alone. A lot of men my age have no close friends. Mine all live far from here. I wrote about that in close friends, just none close by. Isolation makes depression worse, so even one regular point of contact counts.
If you're struggling right now, the Get help now page has the numbers for your country.