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?

@Branleuse We are talking about the inequalities - as pointed out male suicide is far more prevalent than female suicide and the intervention the OP objects to is designed to tackle this.

It is not an open discussion about female health inequality - it is a complaint that men's particular issues are being dealt with in a particular way.

My feminism is about equality, not supremacy - I do not think that men's particular needs being met endangers women's needs also being met.

That is not the point of this thread. OP’s argument essentially is that we should be doing nothing at all to help men suffering with their mental health because women are suffering too. The stats very clearly show that actually women are receiving the majority of mental health care on the NHS.

The basic idea of an outdoor social activity as part of social proscribing I am on board with, if offered to both men and women. I know it is provided to both men and women at a local community sauna in north east London, for example.

A ticket to Forest Green Rovers given their recent performance and the catering being all vegan is not something I can imagine helping mental health much.

I agree with this, as I said its not a race to the bottom.

Do men ever struggle to get a diagnosis? Are you saying all women wait 8 years and men all get instant diagnosis? We can't really base our judgement on what happened to 2 people from one family.

again: this is the FWR board and we are talking about women's issues. The bleats of "what about da menz" are wholly unnecessary especially in view of the fact that nobody at all has said that resources should be taken away from men.

that is not what i understood OPs argument to be at all.

Studies prove that men’s health is taken more seriously than women’s. Men will often be referred for a scan or to a specialist from their first GP visit. Women will visit repeatedly and are told to lose weight, try these pills, take up yoga, have physio, jump through flaming hoops of fire before they reach the same point.

I agree with you OP, that is a piss take. I don't think we'll ever have balanced health/social care between the sexes.

How odd, I've never had a doctor say any of that to me although I did have a GP who thought my underactive thyroid was depression. Then again my husband wasn't diagnosed for a potential issue that has left him disabled for the past 35 years so I don't think it is clear cut.

I wonder what the OP would think if someone told her that sinus trouble shouldn't be treated while people have cancer/kidney failure or some other life threatening condition? It really shouldn't be setting people against each other. If tickets to football stops a suicide it sounds like a bargain.

@RainSoakedNights Your post is very strange. It's bizarre to argue "X shouldn't receive healthcare because I have Y issue that isn't being taken seriously." It makes no logical sense.

By the way, doctors jumping to the conclusion of telling their patients to lose weight may be wrong, but it's a universal experience and men get the same comments when visiting the doctor.

I hate the type of feminists that think improving things for one sex should mean making things worse for the other. In reality, things will be better for both sexes if the mental health of either improves because the vast majority of people in the world share their life with a member of the opposite sex.

What would you say to somebody complaining about domestic violence initiatives being aimed at women rather than men? The gap between the number of male and female abusers is much closer than the gap between male and female suicides so it'd be a more logical argument.

And it's a stupid argument about football violence. Sending men to football games isn't suddenly going to make them violent. It's more about the culture of the type of people that are already invested in football - copious alcohol, hooliganism, etc.

And tbf we hear a LOT more about the 100 women a year than the 80 men a week.

I don't have an issue with this at all. I do agree that women's health issues are marginalised and that needs to change . I'm not sure pouring less money into men's mental health is the way to challenge it though. The issue is surely not that men are getting too much help but that women are getting too little? Especially as regards issues like endo, PCOS, ADHD, ASD, fibromyalgia etc.

You need to talk to a therapist, this is not a healthy way to be thinking about the world.