How Men Up North is encouraging honest conversation around mental health

Men Up North was set up three years ago to encourage more men to talk about their mental health. Daniel Dylan Wray talks to the organisation’s founder Angga Kara.
Men Up North founder Angga Kara. Photo: Matt BellMen Up North founder Angga Kara. Photo: Matt Bell
Men Up North founder Angga Kara. Photo: Matt Bell

“Empathy not therapy” is the tagline that neatly sums up the approach of Men Up North. Founded by Angga Kara in 2017 the organisation, which runs across Sheffield, Chesterfield and Hartlepool, is on a mission “to normalise honest conversations on male mental health and masculinity in the North of England”.

Kara had thrown himself into business from a young age, building up an enterprise but battling through, and ignoring, signs of severe anxiety and depression.

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He subsequently had two major burnouts that impacted on his life drastically, then in one single year three of his friends took their own life. After that the executive coach and social entrepreneur knew he needed to do something.

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Man with a mission to help improve our mental health

He set up Men Up North, with the aim of providing a platform so fewer people would have to go through what he went through.

Kara says he wanted to “explore masculinity and what it means to be a man in the modern world; provide safe spaces to facilitate conversation with confidentiality and respect; and to be accessible to males, regardless of background, age or heritage”.

The demand was there from the off and the voluntary-led organisation has grown from there. The monthly Can We Talk sessions “offer a new piece of learning at the start of every session”, says Kara. “Which increases self-awareness and allows men to learn how to take responsibility for their own lives, goals and feelings. This is achieved through open, honest, confidential and non-judgmental discussions.”

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The groups themselves are diverse: a mix of ages, races and different backgrounds. It’s created a platform in which open and honest conversation can be held between people that might not ever meet outside of it and thus further widening understandings and perspectives. Within the groups there’s not so much rules to abide by but a code of conduct.

“A rule is something we follow,” says Kara. “And I – and a lot of the men – don’t really like rules but a code is something we uphold. So it creates a different energy all together. As men we honour the code. It’s about creating a space that is non-judgmental but that also exists as a place to be challenged – because a big part of where we are at in society is: how do we disagree? Where is the practice of disagreement and for people not to take it personally? So adopting these mindsets really help –the idea of self responsibility.”

A big part of the group is attracting men that find this kind of thing difficult to talk about and making them as welcomed and included as possible.

Kara points out that 75 per cent of people who take their own lives are men yet only 36 per cent of talking therapy session referrals are from men.

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For those that struggle with the language of asking for help, the group has even created a universal signal.

“If some men can’t say that they are struggling or can’t say that they need support, that it’s out of their vocabulary because it hurts their ego, we have to ask what else we can do. So we have an emoji, we use the watermelon emoji. We have a group chat and if any of the men place one of those emojis in the chat, all the rest of the men know that that person needs a call or text for a bit of a chat.”

The benefits of such groups and the power of empathy and communication is something that Kara can testify for directly.

“The idea is that by coming to these groups people get to see different perspectives of how life could be from different people,” he says. “As well as a different way of thinking and being beyond the narrow way of thinking that the person has been living. Speaking personally, when I was in the pits, I thought ‘this is it, there’s nothing else out there’, that I would have to be like this the rest of my life.

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“However, through opening and learning and growing and feeling, I came out the other side. I have tools and strategies and people I can call and they are happy to answer. So by coming to the groups it changes their mindset.”

So far, Men Up North has hosted over 500 safe spaces events for men across several projects. These projects include group sessions taking place in barbershops, pubs, cafes, boxing gyms, working men’s clubs and restaurants.

“The idea of these projects being based in these locations is that men traditionally already occupy these spaces,” says Kara. “Therefore encouraging men to attend. The aim of this is to reframe the conversations that occur within these spaces, to transform them into positive and healthy discussions. It’s about taking this outside of the network that we’ve already created.”

However, due to the current Covid-19 crisis, the ability to meet up and share together in the same room has been temporarily stopped.

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Nevertheless, Kara is keen to make sure things go on as best as they can and offer an ongoing support system. Sessions are currently taking place online via Zoom, so that people can still get access to the groups even when at home.

He also encourages people to get in touch via social media and email if they need to. “I feel support for men is be crucial in these times of crisis.”

Martin Frost has also been running informal meet up sessions every other Tuesday, to tackle the extra need for such groups.

Whereas Kara’s monthly classes pick a theme and work through them, Martin encourages an anything goes approach in his, just simply offering a place to talk about anything.

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“It’s two hours of really interesting and honest conversation,” he says. “Some groups have taboos about what you can’t talk about but we just talk about anything. It can be whatever that’s on your mind.”

The results have been notable and the feedback the pair receive has been hugely rewarding. Kara mentions one evening in particular that stuck with him.

“I met one man on New Year’s Eve and he came up to me and said, ‘thank you, you saved my life multiple times’. And I asked what he meant because we’d never really had deep conversations together, he had never attended any groups.

“But he said, ‘just by doing what you’re doing and knowing that the option is there for me and the fact that you’ve been through it and are honest about your journey’. He said that gave him the possibility that there is a better way forward, a better life.

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“It’s a very rewarding thing. It shows that we’re doing the right thing and there’s people getting value from it and a demand for it.”

For Frost, who himself became a class facilitator after being a regular group attendee, says the power of the groups is huge and the role of them simply being there is invaluable.

“If you can come to a space that gives permission to be open and honest then that’s half the battle already won.”

Men up North says its mission is to normalise honest conversations about male mental health, something men often struggle to discuss.

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It works through empathy rather than seeing itself as a form of group therapy. Its aim is to explore what it means to be a man in the modern world, to provide safe spaces for these kind of conversations and for it to be accessible to men, regardless of their background, age or ethnicity.

As for the future of Men Up North, Angga Kara has plans and ambitions but he also has the best interests of attendees in mind.

“The aspiration is for us to scale to different cities in the north with the same level of quality and safety,” he says.

For more information go to menupnorth.co.uk

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