HUMEN is a UK Charity on a mission to improve and maintain men’s mental health through campaigning and The HUMEN Space. This November HUMEN, are announcing its partnership with 15 pubs to raise awareness for its annual ‘Rise Against Suicide’ campaign.
This initiative will culminate in the UK’s first ‘Pub Pilgrimage’ on Sunday 4th December 2022, taking place in 13 locations across the country. Supporters of the charity, including myself and Verge magazine, will embark on a 5,151m walk, each step representing a man who lost their life to suicide in the last year.
HUMEN are dedicated to reducing the number of male suicides, by providing anonymous, preventative, and non-clinical spaces for men to talk, listen and connect on a regular basis. The charity conducted research1 into men’s habits when socialising and found that 85 percent of men do not usually discuss their feelings with other male friends in pubs and bars, despite these being selected as their favourite places to meet.
HUMEN’s research found that, whilst three in ten men (29 percent) will meet their friends at a pub or bar after a stressful day, they don’t actually use these opportunities to discuss their feelings. Over a third (37 percent) said they did not ‘want to bring the mood down’ and, perhaps most crucially, half (48 percent) admitted to not knowing how to help a friend, even if they did express their feelings openly in such a scenario. Only 15 percent of men will feel comfortable enough to discuss each other’s feelings and one in ten (13) percent admitted they would be uncomfortable and dislike these situations if they were to arise.
Men are half as likely to seek out the help and support they need for their mental health. Over 5,000 men in the UK and Ireland took their own lives in the last year, accounting for 74% of all suicides and 14 men take their own lives every day. One in twenty men feel like they have no-one to talk to and it is feelings such as these that can lead to severe consequences.
That’s what HUMEN hopes to change with its new partnership with Star Pubs & Bars. The 2022 fundraising challenge is a sunrise pub pilgrimage, aimed at bringing friends, families, and communities together to reflect and honour those we have lost. It follows on from a successful 2021 campaign in which over 2,000 people took part in a walk for male mental health.
This year, on Sunday 4th December, the walk will be led by HUMEN and the local community, to commemorate every life lost in 2022. Once the walk is complete, we will return to our local pub and will be encouraged to donate the cost of a typical round and support HUMEN’s work via its Mental Health Pub Menu. Pubs in the following cities are involved in the initiative: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester, Brighton, Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool and Southampton.
Find your pub and register for the walk now by clicking here.
Pubs are the cornerstone of many communities, so HUMEN believes they are the perfect place to encourage dialogue and identify mental health concerns, whilst also providing an excellent opportunity to champion healthy relationships with alcohol.
Founder and Actor, River Hawkins said:
“We all need friendly spaces to talk, listen and connect. Pubs are the cornerstone of communities, but as our research tells us, they are currently wasted on men – who would seemingly prefer to talk about anything other than their personal trials and tribulations. We truly believe that this type of gathering place can play an important role in addressing suicide and mental health, if we just harness it for good, rather than the traditional ‘drink and forget’ mentality that plagues male social circles.
This is that our partnership with Heineken aims to achieve this December. This is the second year of our Rise Against Suicide and we intend to Rise every year for years to come. Talking openly to friends, family & professionals are essential steps to overcome the hidden issues and barriers in our quest to lower the number of suicides and in turn, lower the number of metres we walk next year.”
Lawson Mountstevens, Managing Director Star Pubs & Bars, HEINEKEN UK, says: “Pubs are an essential part of communities the length and breadth of the UK, offering warm and welcoming environments for men to come together. As somewhere men already feel at home, they are the ideal place in which to share their feelings over a beer or non-alcoholic beverage. As a company we champion mental health among our colleagues, licensees and their teams and so we are fully behind this important initiative.”
To find your local pub, information will be added here. Make sure to share which location you will be attending ahead of the 4th December. If you can’t attend on that date, donations can still be made to help the team reach the £500,000 target via the event’s Just Giving page.
Supporters of the charity include Andrew Scott, Bill Nighy, Danny Cipriani, Emma Rigby, David Gandy, Tom Odell, Ugo Monye to name a few, and this year it hopes to expand this list even more!
The Verge team will be joining in and finishing up at The Two Bridges, 186 Tooley St, London Bridge please feel free to come and support us and HUMEN!
For more information, visit www.wearehumen.org.
Follow HUMEN on Instagram (@humenorg) and Facebook (@humenorg).
