Living a healthier and happier life doesn’t require a major overhaul of your habits – it’s about small steps to improve short and long-term health, improving your life expectancy and taking time to enjoy every day along the way.

This year, the team at Dads4Kids gave Paul Withall the 2023 International Men's Day Australian Courage Award for his amazing work on promoting the desperate need to reverse the silent epidemic of male suicide in Australia.

If Australia’s male suicide rate could be reduced to that of the rest of the world, 10 men per week would be saved from an early death.

2500 Empty Shoes is a visual presentation on male suicide, held this year on 16 and 19 November on the lawns of Parliament House, Canberra. Day 2 coincides with International Men’s Day.

Our men have to be proactive and address mental illness head-on and ensure that programs are implemented to deal with the aim of curbing suicide rates.

NASA naps last for around 23 minutes and have the potential to save sleep-deprived dads on autopilot.

On the school day my children leave my care, I will drop an “I love you” note into their lunch box or a quirky gift from the two-dollar shop.

Replacing lies with truth in moments that incapacitate us, is the mental martial arts basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Outta Puff Daddys (OPD) is a mixed bag of over-40s men from Brighton in the United Kingdom dancing to bridge the gap between masculinity and good mental health. It’s cringe for a good cause. Together as a group since 2012, they started life as a one-off way to encourage their kids. The “Boy Band” now uses dance routines, while capitalising on the comedy of dads on a dancefloor, to stem the ...

by Rachael Ward New dad Matt Carter knew something wasn’t quite right when he suddenly became overwhelmed with sadness as soon as his two babies started crying. From there it just snowballed. He experienced several breakdowns before finally telling a maternal and child health nurse he was struggling. The now father of three was eventually diagnosed with postnatal depression, a condition he didn’t even know could impact men, as it is ...

Grief is like being “concussed, or slightly drunk”, C.S Lewis mused. It is, he added, an “invisible blanket between the world and me… her absence is like the sky, spread over everything”. Imagining marriage as one ship, C.S. Lewis wrote, “the starboard engine has gone. I, the port engine, must chug along somehow till we make harbour. Or rather, till the journey ends.” Vulnerable and mourning the loss of his wife, ...

Imagine a life without pain. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? I just finished watching a story on 60 Minutes called ‘Pain-Free’. Far from being a utopic experience, it played out more like a horror story. Witnessing the journey of two little girls through a life without pain was excruciating… from putting a hand into a pot of boiling water to chewing fingers through to the bone, it revealed ...

New dad disorientation tends to affect most men faced with the daunting task of finding their fatherhood feet. Thrust into the dad-life, first-time fathers, like their newborns, have a period of adjusting to new routines, and a new identity. The technical term is ‘post-partum disorientation’. Although similar, PPD is not to be confused with ‘postpartum psychosis or depression’. Psychology Today define PPD as a time of “reorientation, and self-redefinition, where old ...

During the past five years, it certainly seems that toxic masculinity has become a cliché. Unfortunately, it is not a harmless cliché: it has repercussions for masculinity, gender relations and the mental development of our boys and men.

Two Scottish teenagers have taken to the hills to promote men’s mental health in the name of their late fathers. Katie Cochrane and Caeley McClenaghan both lost their dads to suicide. Now, the 18-year-olds are on a mission, determined to see more talk and more action in the hope that solidarity, momentum and testimony will help dads, and help reduce the high number of men taking their own lives. Irreplaceable McClenaghan ...

A new book from Richard V. Reeves is winning widespread applause for offering hope to men in a post-feminist world. Released in September, ‘Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it, the father, author, and British-American expat argues for a fundamental shift in the societal attitude towards masculinity. The Guardian highlighted two of Reeves’ major points, first congratulating the author ...

International Men’s Day 2022 was marked by people all over the world on 19 November, demonstrating their support for men and boys everywhere. “I’d like to say a massive thank you and give my support to all the men who do their best each and every single day for their loved ones, for society, for humans in general, to make the world go round. Thank you, it’s very much appreciated.” These ...

‘Fess up — did you skip breakfast this morning? If so (whether it was a pure mistake and your cereal’s still sitting on your bench going soggy, or you make a point of skipping what’s been hailed the most important meal of the day), you’re not alone. More than half of all Aussie adults and one in seven Aussie kids start their day without cereal, toast, yoghurt, fruit or a smoothie ...

Over the last 20 years, I have seen a lot of people come into the men’s movement with big promises and even bigger egos. Mostly they blow in, blow up and then blow out. Sadly, they often hurt other men in the process. I don’t believe Paul Withall from Zero Suicide is one of those men. Tony Miller, the founder of Dads in Distress, feels like I do. We both believe ...

Launched in 1999, and now celebrated in more than 90 countries worldwide, International Men’s Day is going from strength to strength. International Men’s Day celebrates positive male role models and the loving strength that men bring to their families and communities. We highlight the need to address the male suicide crisis and we often campaign for improvement in men’s health. One of the six pillars of International Men’s Day is: “To focus on ...