The Next Generation
The transition from adolescence to adulthood has always been fraught with challenges. But today’s young men are undoubtedly struggling. Rates of anxiety and depression are on the rise, with exam pressures, an unstable job market and conflicting messages around masculinity compounding the problem. But the right support systems can make all the difference. Here are our dispatches from the front line of young adulthood
As a general rule, Men’s Health doesn’t deal in the lives of teenage boys.
But recent headlines have become hard to avoid. You only need to take a cursory glance at the news to see that something’s very wrong: ‘GCSE results for boys a matter of national concern’, ‘Figures lay bare shocking scale of Andrew Tate’s reach among young men’ and ‘Sexual harassment of females a “scourge in schools”’. It’s a blend of handwringing concern, pointed accusation and plain-faced fear. We know as well as anyone that young men’s problems don’t end at adolescence. You’ve read the statistics: men are more likely to perpetrate and become the victims of violent crime; they are more likely to end up sleeping rough or in a prison cell; more likely to use and abuse illegal drugs and alcohol, and they’re more likely to take their own lives.
The statistic that suicide is the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50 (and, indeed, the third most common cause for young people aged 10 to 19) is now so well worn, it risks losing potency. But it shouldn’t.
Jonny Benjamin MBE knows that fact all too well. He knows what it’s like to be a young man afflicted by poor mental health. On 14 January 2008, Benjamin ran away from a psychiatric hospital, where he’d been recovering from a psychotic episode that he suffered at university. He eventually found himself peering over the edge of London’s Waterloo Bridge, preparing to jump. He was spotted by a man on his way to work. The stranger was able to convince him that how he felt on that day didn’t have to last a lifetime. The 20-year-old could get better. Since that day on the bridge, Benjamin, now 36, has found methods that help him live with schizoaffective disorder – therapy, medication, mindfulness – but he’s not ‘cured’ and still has down days. His experience of mental ill health was the catalyst for his campaign work, and he’s since founded the youth mental health charity Beyond.
‘As soon as I started to share what happened to me, I was amazed at how many people around me were like, “Oh my god, I’ve been through something similar and it started in my teens, as well,”’ he says.
Benjamin’s own teenage years were a key turning point for
