Men’s Mental Health is so hot right now. Watching Gillette and Lynx’s advertising campaigns pivot on the past two decades of perpetuating misogyny and toxic masculinity in the hope they’ll be seen as enlightened doesn’t feel so much as a change of heart but an awareness that the type of advertising form the nineties doesn’t sell their razors and deodorant like it used to. It’s hard to figure out what’s a genuine attempt and what’s a ploy revive a brand/career with advice like “It’s alright to cry” and “express yourself, dye your hair!”- a lot of this is written by people in safe spaces to express themselves, for people who aren’t.
This Book Could Help doesn’t feel like a cash grab, in fact all the royalties of the sales go to Mind, a mental health charity. Described as a “Men’s mental health manual” The author, Rotimi Askinsete, a doctor and mental health advocate, has done a remarkable job in covering so many topics, exercises and examples in a book that’s easy to digest, but can sometimes be undermined by it’s simplicity and lack of motivation to make any emotional connection with the reader. If it’s not an achievement in artistry, it is in scope. It’s a double edged sword- creating something accessible to all ages and reading levels, but winding up creating a book that feels hollow.
Rotimi makes every part of the book as clear as possible, referencing his own life when appropriate, never longer than a sentence, it’ll usually be to admit to a time he’s dropped the ball in regards to keeping up with healthy routines. There’s a very British polite shyness regarding anything dealing with trauma, grief and accounting for ones’ own toxic behaviour. It’s made clear in the introduction that This Book Could Help works best as an introduction to understanding the basic language surrounding mental health and aims to help men maintain a healthy mind state through the coming and goings of everyday life. It’s very much for people who are unaware of trigger warnings, breathing exercises, leaking emotions you’ve ignored that turned into an unhealthy anger.
The Manual is split into ten parts, with each part having a few sub-chapters. In total, it’s forty two separate sections across one hundred and twenty four pages. While that can look intimidating, opening the book reveals a total opposite- The designers, Blok Graphic, don’t leave any page without a corresponding image, or blowing up a sentence to take up a page, a sentence that’d work perfectly as a tweet, The way the book is segmented feels like it’s geared towards people who are more used to twitter and instagram than traditional self-help books. There’s no way you can’t go through the whole manual and not be reminded there’s a part of your well being you’re ignoring, in Lifelong Learning I was reminded that I’ve been telling myself I’m going to take Spanish lessons for about three years now.
Rotimi brings the pieces, but has forgotten the screws- and with a book that has a quote on it that claims it will save lives, you can’t really have one without the other. There is no power, no emotional attachment and when we read, watch, listen, it’s the feeling of being connected to another human, or to something even bigger, behind art that changes and saves so many lives. If only our brains were as easy to put together as Ikea furniture.