“We’re not solving anyone’s problems, but they don’t have to face them alone,” says Jack Woodhams, co-founder of mental health charity Menfulness.<\/p>\n
“That’s the power of community: the power of realising it’s very normal to feel this way.”<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, Jack could not have foreseen he would play a key part in a wellbeing movement based in York, tackling the stigma around men’s mental health.<\/p>\n
He just really wanted a chat.<\/p>\n
Trying to find the balance between work, being a new father and the general demands of life, Jack had found his mental health declining, taking him to what he describes as “low places”.<\/p>\n
While post-natal support services for women seemed more commonplace, at the time there was little focus on men navigating parenthood, he says.<\/p>\n
His wife, recognising that he was struggling, encouraged him to connect with other new fathers, including her friends’ partners.<\/p>\n
That is how a group of sleep-deprived dads first met up for a coffee to share the highs and lows of raising children, putting the wheels in motion for the creation of what would become Menfulness.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think we thought we’d be where we are now when we first met up,” Jack laughs.<\/p>\n
“We just wanted a vent, a bit of bacon and a coffee – and to talk about parenthood in an honest way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We’re not solving anyone’s problems, but they don’t have to face them alone,” says Jack Woodhams, co-founder of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-336515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}