Anyone else’s blood boiling about the “trial” for social prescribing of football games to men?

[RainSoakedNights]

I know men’s mental health is important.

But women’s health is constantly ignored. It took me eight years to get my sinus issues taken seriously - I was always told to lose weight and it would just go away. I can’t get my anxiety taken seriously (they tell me to just take time off work and lose weight), but my dad has one panic attack and he’s being prescribed medication and being referred for talking therapies.

The NHS can’t fix the most basic of women’s care, but they can run trials of sending men to football matches? How on earth can they think this is a good idea?

Thank you for that information. I don't think it's quite the same but I'm offered lots of support as a carer. I've been my husband's carer for many years and probably saved the country a lot of money. Someone occasionally getting in contact, inviting me to a meetup with tea and cake doesn't cost much but makes a difference.

Just for clarity male carers get the same invites.

Because society only cares about men. Even in these comments it’s being touted as this amazing thing, when in reality it’s a load of bollocks. It’s a cash grab for the football team and a “look, we’re doing something!” For the nhs. But of course, it’ll be a huge success and it shan’t be long before we’re seeing men being sent to football games for free up and down the country, while women are left behind again

Yup. This is correct.

And yet were the ones continually gaslighted by the medical profession.

You are still talking as if the men in this situation don't need Healthcare and shouldn't have access to it.

That's simply not true.

Trialing alternative approaches such as social prescribing is probably cheaper than other methods- leaving more money in the pot for others' healthcare needs. So I don't think it is denying someone in 'true' (your words) need.

Your personal experience is awful and I'm sorry that happened to you. But it just isn't an argument against trialing something that might make a difference for other people.

My argument is that there are much more pressing issues than prescribing men football tickets. If FGR felt so strongly about it, they should run an initiative off their own backs - without the NHS being involved at all. The NHS should be focussing resources on what’s actually needed

How do you know it's not needed? Just because you don't care about men's mental health there will be plenty of women who do. If it doesn't work presumably the trial will be judged a failure.

Has it ever occured to you that the reason you keep being told to lose weight for each and every health issue you present with might be because it is actually a co-morbidity rather than ingrained sexism? Or is that too outlandish an idea to contemplate.

Loneliness is not a health issue though.

I’m sorry but it just isn’t. There’s a serious social problem in this country, our third spaces have been destroyed. But that’s not healthcare.

I think being told to lose weight while sat in front of a physicians associate with a sinus infection so bad my eyes were swollen shut is a load of shit.

I lost seven stone and guess what? I still get sinus infections and I’m still anxious! But because I’ve lost the weight I’m just told it must be working and well done.

Do you think the men go to the doctor and say 'I'm lonely'?

Or do you think they say they are depressed and the doctor decides that one thing that might help is social interaction, and here's a way to encourage you to do it?

You’re incredibly unreasonable OP, and I don’t understand really why you’re pitting mens mental health & womens mental health against each other the way you are.

£1 for men’s mental health doesn’t directly equal £1 less for women’s mental health. Where does your argument stop? Nobody should be having NHS appointments for obesity because they should just eat less, every appointment they take up is one less appointment for women? What about when those people are women? It’s not all as directly correlated as you clearly want to think it is to make women the victim here and I say that as a woman myself. I want everybody to have access to healthcare and mental health is important to everyone.

Men can’t simply resolve their own mental health problems anymore than women can, or any more than an obese person can simply stop eating, or an alcoholic can simply stop having a drink, or indeed how someone with a broken leg can simply fix it themselves.

I completely agree OP.
Its a stupid gimmick

I agree with you op. Women are always an afterthought, if even a thought at all. We are still having to claw our way through the courts for our rights and dignities. You’d think we would be more enlightened than that by now. But no. Patriarchy reigns supreme still.

Yet women are consistently left to their own devices to solve it themselves

You don't seem to be listening to anyone but yourself on this thread.

You clearly are angry at your perception of how you have been treated.

This seems to make you unable to understand that there are other people suffering and that some of them are men.

Are you aware of your misandry?

So now it’s misandry to point out that women’s health issues are consistently ignored?

The OP is clearly very very angry at the way the NHS has traditionally told women to "get on with it" compared to men. And I get it, I think we all get it.

But men get ill too, in my experience they have very little to do with the NHS untill it's serious. Contraception, pregnancy, small child wrangling all pulled me in to the health care circle. At 61 I've never got out of it, while husband 1 never saw a doctor till he dropped dead, and husband 2 is similar.
At the moment everything looks to be in a flat spin, sticking plasters flying everywhere.

There's a lot to get angry about, just maybe not this.

I agree that men are taken more seriously in just about every area of life including healthcare.
Also agree on the constant ignoring of women’s health complaints in favour of standard weight comment from gps.

Loneliness is a health issue. It's actually very important, and should not be dismissed.

It directly causes increased risk of things like heart disease by causing chronic stress, which causes physical changes.

It's far cheaper to prevent these things than treat them.

Are you sure about that, or is that just what fits your narrative?

Take weight loss as an example, women make up a significant majority of those in NHS funded weight loss schemes. In fact 77% of referrals to specialist NHS weight management clinics go to women. For community weightloss referrals 86-90% go to women.

Or lets look at your exact example of mental health, only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies go to men, so 64% go to women. Now those are the actual stats to disprove your narrative entirely- women are not being left to it, in fact they are getting 64% of that resource.

Like a lot of PP's, I'm not getting angry. I'd watch to see if it's a success. If it is, there might be other companies willing to do comparable things for other groups of people.

Coming from a family where male suicide has left deep, horrific scars, I welcome any initiative that could help

Honestly sending men to football … or mums for a “free massage” (this happened in my area) COMPLETELY ignores the cause and is not a long term solution.

The stressed mum gets a free massage and is supposed feel grateful and “ Helped” but ignore what’s causing her MH.

It’s a temporary diversion & waste of money and pathetic assumption that all men like football .. (Unless the man’s MH issue stems from lack of tickets)

This is the feminism board. Id hope that we would be able to talk about inequalities in health care, and be able to discuss this without being accused of fucking misandry!!

Jeez

And talking therapy, community groups, outdoor activities, knitting groups , reading groups , library get togethers , walking groups, social prescribing is for everyone and is available to everyone.

It is, though, isn't it? I mean, social prescribing is widely available via GPs, for men and women alike. I've used it myself. The social prescriber researches a whole range of available and suitable activities and helps a little bit to ease you in to one or two that you choose.

I imagine that this trial is more about the choice of which particular activities might be helpful, rather than amounting to a brand new initiative uniquely available to men.

It sounds like a great thing to me.

Around 2,700 men under 50 die by suicide each year.
Approximately 625 women under 50 die by suicide annually.

Every death by suicide is awful. And more can be done to help prevent it amongst women and men. But the numbers of men who die by suicide is 4x higher than the number of women.