International Men's Health Week - how culture shapes the way men look after themselves

International Men's Health Week runs every June in the lead-up to Father's Day. It started as a way to draw attention to the health needs of men and boys globally - not just in the UK, but across every country, community, and cultural background. That global frame matters, because the relationship men have with their own health is shaped, often more than anything else, by where they come from.

Every culture hands men a script about what it means to be a man. Some scripts are built around strength and silence. Others centre on family duty, honour, or pride. Some communities carry the expectation that a man who is struggling handles it privately, or within the family, or not at all. Those rules are often unspoken and invisible - and they can still be running in the background when a man decides whether or not to see a doctor, or a counsellor, or to say out loud that he isn't doing well.

This isn't only about mental health. The patterns run through physical health too. Men from certain communities attend GP appointments less frequently. Some dietary norms carry risks that go unexamined. Conditions that might be picked up early in a routine check go unnoticed because the check never happens. The belief that enduring discomfort is strength can delay the moment you find out something is wrong, and make the eventual diagnosis harder to receive.

Mental health carries an additional layer. In many cultures, psychological distress isn't understood as something that can be worked with in a confidential conversation. It may be framed as spiritual weakness, or family failure, or something to be managed behind closed doors. The shame around asking for help can be more isolating than the problem itself. For men navigating both a cultural identity and the pressures of life in the UK - often across different expectations at home and in the world outside - that tension adds its own weight.

None of this is meant to reduce anyone to a set of cultural generalisations. The point is the opposite. Culture and heritage shape how men experience health, what they believe about their own resilience, and how willing they are to seek help - and those shaped beliefs deserve to be understood in context, not treated as character flaws.

What helps is having a space where that context doesn't need to be explained from scratch. Where a man can say something about his background, his family, the rules he grew up with - and have it received with understanding rather than confusion.

Mettle works with men from all cultures and heritages. If something is getting in the way of your health - physical, mental, or somewhere in between - a conversation is a reasonable place to begin. Free 15-minute call with Chris.