Directions for Men / Mentell

 

For reasons I won’t get into here, I decide it was time to take a break from support group Andy’s Man Club. It was time to look around for other alternatives in the mental health community. I looked back at this event I went to in November last year about Male Loneliness, held in 53Two bar.  

Directions for Men seemed like a good group to investigate as they had a weekly online check-in on a Friday night, via Zoom. I joined in one of these. 

Founded by Chris Judge in 2019, the group has 2 sessions a week – the online 40-minute group, and a longer face-to-face group in Stockport. Bit far for me. They all seem like a good bunch of lads going through their own shit, helping each other out. 

Mentell, I understand, is a group very similar in format to Andy’s Man Club, and I gather that’s because it was set up by someone who had a fallout with AMC and set up his own online group. I’d joined in one session in the early days of the pandemic and found it a positive experience, largely because there was no need to trek into town to meet people and do the before and after waffle. (Not that we were allowed then anyway.) 

Discussing things with other strangers, dealing with similar problems, from the comfort of our respective homes, was a huge relief. I’d always considered restarting there. This week I’d managed to respond to their reminder email asking me to save a seat at the Monday night online circle. 

The rules were explained – this is a private group, and each person in the group should be sat in a private room with no-one interrupting them. If anyone is seen entering the frame of their webcam, their feed is disconnected. We’re assigned a ‘room’ with maybe 10 other members. The rules: no discussions of medication, politics or religion. 

We’re asked to rate our mood, 1 being terrible, 10 being great. People with the lowest mood score get to share first. The room’s facilitator keeps the list in order, and calls people’s names one at a time. I felt pretty good, so was towards the back of the queue. Fine by me. 

You can use the ‘raise hand’ feature to ask people questions about their share or to share reassurances like you might in any other group. At the end: a closing statement reminding us to share the group, to encourage people to join, but to retain the confidentiality of the group. Nothing actually shared in the group is retold anywhere else. We’re then asked to give one word to sum up our thoughts or feelings. I think mine was ‘relief.’ (Okay, I can choose to share my own info.) 

I found the session really helpful, straightforward and time-efficient. 

To get involved, sign up for the email alert on the website, keep your eye out for it, book your place, wait for the link to be sent and you’re good to go.