Callouses, wads of chew, whisky, gun powder. Ready to shoot. Gruff men of few words.
We love our punchy, gritty, down-in-the-dirt cowboys here in Wyoming. It’s been said, the world needs more of them. But when does the unflinchingly tough, aggressive, hyper-independent stereotype we often associate with “real men” turn on us?
“You know, we’re always talking about pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, or we fake it till we make it, right?” said Bob Vines, Prevention Specialist with the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. That ideology, designed to breed strong men, does not help them when the metaphorical bootstraps break.
Wyoming has the highest suicide rate in the country, 29.4 per 100,000 people in 2019, double the national average. According to the Wyoming Department of Health, that averages out to about one Wyomingite dead by suicide every 60 hours. Men make up the majority of those deaths.
“Talking about our feelings or asking people for help are signs of weakness, whereas a sudden burst of anger might prove our mettle. We’re socialized to believe, as men, that we have to keep that power and control in order to be a real man,” said Vines.
Control over what affects you physically, emotionally. Control over what other people think, the way that they act. Fear of losing control and the effort to keep it, Vines said, is at the root of problems with suicide, substance abuse, sexual violence and homophobia.
Vines told a story that shows how men can take the “I ride alone,” self-sufficient ideology too far in their daily lives.
“I got COVID,” Vines said. “The week leading up to my hospitalization, I started falling into these terrible stereotypes of masculinity. For instance, my wife, who was with me when I got ill, was trying to get me to go into the doctor’s office, and I just refused. ‘I’ll muscle through this, they’re busy, they don’t want to deal with me, I don’t need help.’ And honestly, it almost killed me. I mean, I ended up going to the hospital for over two months and was on a ventilator for a long time, because I refused to get help when I needed it.”
Vines’ story tells of a much larger problem: men won’t ask for help. And when they do, sometimes it’s not there.
“We simply don’t have enough mental health resources in Wyoming to address the problem. And here we are, and we celebrate our rugged individualism. We confuse loneliness with self-prescribed solitude. The CDC says that rural Americans have a higher rate of depression. Suicide rates of rural counties are around 65% higher than those in urban areas. When you look at that, we simply don’t have the primary care providers or mental health resources that we have in other places around the country,” Vines said.
In Wyoming, suicide is the second leading cause of death contributing to years of potential life lost, according to the CDC. The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that 30 percent of men have suffered a period of depression in their lifetime. Living in tight-knit Wyoming communities, the majority of readers will know what it is like to lose a friend, a family member, the kid next door to suicide. Risk factors include stress, depression, emotional neglect and substance abuse. Those topics can seem taboo, but to provide a support system for the men in our lives, they can’t be.
“The more we talk about it, the more we understand and feel comfortable,” said Vines.
“I used to go to lunch with a group of guys there in Worland every Friday. We would talk about football and we would fix the high school football team over sandwiches at the office. It was really difficult to ever talk about anything outside of those subjects. But ever since I started doing this work, I started testing them out, just to see their reactions. The more often you start talking about this, the less stigmatized it becomes. Pretty soon, you’re having these conversations, and once you have these conversations men are going to start to feel more safe about that.
“Yes, there’s going to be pushback. There always is. There’s always going to be that alpha male that’s going to try and bring everybody back in line, right? I can imagine there’s going to be several of them reading this article. You’ve just got to fight back on that, though.”
Honesty, straight-forwardness and courage are also in the cowboy toolbelt. People need to apply a little of that to the talk around men’s mental health. “We all struggle from time to time,” as Vines pointed out.
And for men who fear admitting vulnerability, it is important to remember the difference between a hand up and a handout. Vines recommended some resources for men looking to improve their mental health. Mantherapy.org, which sports the slogan, “According to science, bad things can happen to men, too.” We Empower ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) helps people address childhood traumas that may affect their mental health at weempoweraces.org. And for those considering suicide, call 988, the National Suicide Hotline available 24 hours a day.
“Another important thing to remember is that you don’t have to be OK to ask somebody if they’re OK. We’re all struggling. And that should make it easier for us to connect,” Vines said.
