Akhil Sistla’s English TEDx Talk (Initial Ideas and a rough Draft)

Imagine on a fine day, you wake up to find one of your relative has passed away naturally. You feel
shocked, shattered, crushed inside. You wish you could’ve done something to prevent it.
Anything… but you settle down after a while, because you realise you had no control over the
situation. But imagine for a second, you have full control over someone’s life and death. Would
you save them? That is the choice the media is given over and over, with more than (some
number) of suicides a year, the choice that media is given could potentially save many more lives.
Instead they choose the same option of portraying deaths by suicide as less significant when
compared to deaths caused by diseases and medical conditions.

I want everyone to think about what it would be like if we were of opposite

genders our entire lives, maybe some of you might become a bit sporty,
smarter, even have a bigger group of friends. But I want you to go a bit
deeper than that, what about mental health? Specifically, an adult male with
constant societal pressures and dissatisfaction with their life. The fact is, in
2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that around 3046
Australians died by suicide in 2018, slightly lower than in previous years.
Whilst at first, it might seem a bit of good news that suicidal rates are
dropping, however, it is still sad to know that around 76% of the suicides
were accounted for by men. Now, this might or might not surprise you, but,
what I think is the cause for this is a lack of awareness and importantly, the
societal pressures men face on a daily basis which ultimately leads men to
not seek help and go down this dark path.

Now, the media covers every aspect of social issues, from poverty, domestic
violence, disability and many more. But have you ever seen anything
specifically for men…? Like mental support? Rarely… It’s not as light and
simple as the release of a new song from a celebrity. It’s about people’s
lives, their wellbeing and their mental stability. Lack of knowledge and
awareness about this problem takes away the deserved help that people
need away from them, when in fact, there are multiple websites such as
Beyond Blue, MensLine and other great facilities readily available to offer
any help they can.

While that is one reason, there is another one. The good old society. Society
stereotypically expects men to be the “tougher” people mentally and
physically. Normally, people don’t really care these days, as to what society
expects. They live according to their will and likings. However, there is
always that small part in our brain which just likes to fit-in, or likes to please
other people, be accepted by them. That is the problem. Men usually think
twice about asking help, but due to this additional pressure they get from
society in general, about being the “tough” people, they hesitate even more.
Let’s, for example, take a boy in high school. Usually, they always try to
keep up to date with the latest information to ensure that he stays relevant in
the conversation and not be seen as being different. Now the same thing
applies to adults with mental health problems, they cannot share the
problems, because they’re usually afraid as to how people might start
judging them and labelling them as “mad” or “insane”.