Men's health - What can we do?

"There is no more important task than raising boys who become healthy men."

- Michael Reichert, How to raise a boy

Raising boys to become healthy men

I’m not one to eavesdrop.

I like to keep myself to myself.  But last week I couldn’t help but notice a middle-aged man in distress. Whilst sipping a hard-earned beer outside a beautiful riverside pub in Ely with my wife, it came to our attention that a gentleman on the table behind us was going through a tough time. In raised tones, he was speaking to a member of his family on the phone. The narrative of his discussion was that he felt he had done all he can to assist his daughter who had seemed to reject or discard his help and she decided to do the thing he didn’t want her to do. He then started crying. “She’s broken me, she’s broken me. I can’t do this anymore” I still have no idea what the context of this conversation was about, but what was clear was the emotional and psychological strain this event was happening on him.  I suppose the main thing I took away from this situation was that I don’t think I had ever seen a middle-aged man breakdown so emotionally and so publicly before. He shortly left and afterwards I mentioned to my wife that I hoped he wasn’t on his own and could lean on someone for support. And I think that is just one of the issues that, particularly men, struggle with. Who can I talk to? Who can I lean on when things get rough? Do I have the support network? So what can be done to stem the tide of ever-increasing issues with men’s health? Changing the culture There is hope and there is also a lot of good people who are trying to shift the balance in the decline in men’s health but the education and real cultural change needs to happen when the man is a boy.

Here are just a few statistics on the state of boy’s health and education in the UK: - In 2025, 44.8% of those achieving grade 4+ across all GCSE subjects were male, compared to 55.2% female according to gov.uk.

- Between the ages of 8-10, boys were 30% more likely than girls to have a probable mental health disorder according to gov.uk.

- According to Sport England, only 52% of boys aged between 5-16 meet the recommended physical activity level.

- A 2024 survey of teachers by the charity, Lads Need Dads found that among secondary school teachers, 93% believed there was a link between boys having an absent father or limited access to a positive role model and disruptive behaviour. In a nutshell, some, but not all, of the underlying issues can be related to education, mental health, physical health and positive male influences. If we continue to do what we’ve always done, we will end up with not just the same result but it’ll be much worse. The ever increasing fragmentation of the family dynamic in the UK is exacerbating the need for support for young boys. Many have little to no contact with their fathers. Increasing isolation and loneliness has also been well documented with the rising use and access to technology which results in boys staying in their bedrooms in front of screens without personal, social interaction with their peers. Poor diets, ultra-processed food in cheap meals because financial restraints are biting, rising costs to use leisure facilities and the limitation of physical education time and venues are contributing to the increasing obesity rates of boys. Asking, not just boys but all children, to sit still, in groups of up to thirty and listen to a teacher talk for up to an hour, for six hours a day, five days a week is insane. This hasn’t deviated massively since the Victorian age. The necessity for schools to be seen as high achieving for Ofsted visits can result in the isolation and disregarding of boys who have other talents away from the mainstream academic subjects. This persistent neglect of embracing change, cultural innovation and learning from what worked in the past is helping to sow the seeds of fundamental problems in our boys in society and unless this is reformed, the men will be the ones that suffer.