Deepening conversations around young men's mental health
Service Improvement Specialist | @FinlayGreen_
Communications and Digital Officer | @4licerose
This year, World Mental Health Day's leading campaign is to ‘make mental health and wellbeing a global priority’. Wellbeing and mental health is a key feature of the work here at the Lab to improve outcomes for children and young people. NHS digital estimate that 1 in 6 young people have a diagnosable mental illness, with many 5 – 16 year olds reporting experiencing low mood, anxiety and eating disorders.
Last year, we joined forces with the Mental Health Foundation, Black Thrive and Colourful Minds on the “Becoming a Man” (BAM) project, a US-born programme developed by Youth Guidance, aimed at exploring and supporting young men to learn and practice impulse control and emotional regulation, among other social skills. Our job as the evaluators is to establish whether and how BAM might be feasible to deliver in Lambeth, South London.
Societal pressures about what it means to be a man and the difficulties young men and boys face when having conversations about their mental health has resulted in many often struggling to access services or support. This results in many young men entering services at crisis point. According to the suicide prevention charity CALM who campaign for appropriate support for men affected by suicide, young men are statistically more likely to take their own lives than women, with 75% of all UK suicides being male. This statistic demonstrates why interventions like BAM are so valuable and needed in communities.
BAM has demonstrated in America that if you give young men the opportunity to share by bringing them into a space to explore their own wellbeing and what this means in their community, it often results in a positive effect on their future outcomes. Young men respond positively in an environment where they are listened to and understood without judgement, and as communities evolve both globally and in the areas we work in closer to home, it is our collective responsibility as researchers, service designers and practitioners to continue providing this platform.
What is BAM and how is it helping youth mental health?
BAM is a two-year, group-based intervention delivered in schools with adolescent boys. Developed in Chicago in the early 2000s and brought to London for the first time, BAM tries to improve education outcomes and reduce criminal activity by promoting social and emotional development.
Finlay Green, Service Improvement Specialist, at the Lab working on the BAM evaluation said: “The goal is to help young people to develop the skills to help them make better decisions throughout their lives. It might be that they become less involved in risk-taking behaviour, including criminal behaviour. It might also mean that they engage better with learning in school, attend class more and improve relationships at home.” In the next section, we share the core ideas at the heart of BAM.
What learning can BAM offer to those interested in improving men’s mental health?
Setting principles can help reframe what it means to be a young man and hold each other to account
One aim of BAM is to encourage and support the young men to reflect and understand what it means to be a man, and what that feels like to them.
“It’s about understanding the kind of man you want to be and being able to act in alignment with that understanding,” explains Finlay.
BAM uses six core values to begin reframing what it means to be a man: integrity, self-determination, positive anger expression, accountability, respect for womanhood and visionary goal setting.
“Integrity is the real foundation of BAM, where all the other values are based on. The idea is that if you have integrity, you can develop your understanding of who you want to be. And you can articulate that understanding and stay in alignment with it - and when you’re out of alignment with that understanding, you can get back in,” explains Finlay.
A key part of the programme is to create a safe space to allow the young men to openly express themselves, receive support and develop the social and emotional skills necessary to succeed. The BAM sessions incorporate these core values alongside sharing lived experiences, role play and group activities to explore the issues and pressures the young men face.
Each young person who participates also has regular one to ones with a BAM counsellor, based at the school. Young people are also invited to attend trips and other ‘fun’ activities to maintain their engagement and participation in the programme.
One key element of the sessions are the ‘BAM circles’ where they are asked to share how they are feeling physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually and to reflect on how these feelings represent being a man. Through being able to express how they feel, BAM gives them a different understanding of what their identity as a man means.
“BAM is so attractive to young guys because so many of them are desperately trying to figure out what it means to be a man and trying to prove themselves, and BAM offers them a way to do that,” says Finlay.
Creating clear pathways to navigate conflict and challenge adversity through emotional and physical activities
The sessions also have an active component, where the participants take part in role play based exercise s, group missions or other physical activities that help young people to actively experience what it feels like to be in or out of alignment with BAM’s core values.
One of the first activities in BAM is called ‘the fist’. In pairs, one young person is asked to close his fist, and their partner is simply asked to open it. No further instructions are given. This results in a lot of physical contact and wrestling as they attempt to follow through with these instructions. Some young people are successful, some are not. This exercise is followed by an opportunity for reflection; why are you fighting? How did you respond to the instruction? Why didn’t you just ask your partner to open their fist? By internalising this idea – that if you ask for what you want, you might just get it - young people develop greater confidence in their ability to communicate what they want and need - which helps them to control how they feel and behave.
“Helping them experience something in an active way, gives the young people an opportunity to stand in someone else’s shoes and then reflect on what they did or didn’t do afterwards,” says Finlay.
As the sessions develop, and the counsellor builds up a relationship with the young people and gains their trust, they attend more BAM circles, with different activities, and talking about their feelings becomes a routine. The young men learn and understand, that whilst still holding the belief that a man can be ‘strong’, they also recognise that a strong man means being honest and vulnerable too. Building on the ability to understand others and be understood has a positive effect on home and school life, all relating back to communication and how they interact with people in their lives.
“This is quite transformative for a lot of young boys who aren’t used to talking about their feelings or naming how they feel,” says Finlay.
Designing spaces for men to feel seen, be listened to and understood without judgement, negative labels or assumptions.
When young people choose to participate in BAM, the space is opened by a counsellor who becomes an adult male role model to the young men. He also partakes in the group agreement and conditions that everyone must follow. In the same way as the young people of BAM, the counsellor is also encouraged to have fun, be safe, show respect, challenge themselves and others. The space of mutual respect and safety, offers freedom to share without fear of judgement. This modelling, helps the counsellor act as a positive role model, practicing the behaviour and expectations of BAM in real-time.
“There is something quite powerful about seeing someone being raw and open, especially an adult. The counsellor is constantly being respectful of themselves and others. They show they’re motivated and that they’re willing to have fun. And they always challenge themselves to be open and honest and vulnerable. They model that behaviour. It makes that counsellor appear strong to be able to be honest and the young people see that and learn there’s a strength in being honest and being authentic with yourself,” explains Finlay.
When the young people gain mutual respect within their space, they begin to develop a real sense of belonging and safety within BAM. The group becomes self-managed, and they are able to protect the conditions of their group by reminding their peers of the expectations when in the space, rather than looking to the counsellor to do this for them. Collective responsibility of their space has resulted in BAM having such an impact on the wellbeing of these young men.
BAM and the future
In the early 2010s, President Obama attended a BAM circle in South Chicago, to understand for himself the impact it was having on young people and how the benefits could be imitated in other places in the US facing similar issues.
“BAM just exploded after that,” Finlay explains. “Obama was very impacted by it and became a big champion for BAM, even while President. It became a huge part of his third sector work. It also had a couple of very favourable randomised control trials in Chicago schools, which showed a positive effect on educational outcomes, high school graduations and arrest reductions.”
BAM has since spread to other US states, including Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle, benefiting 8,000 young people across 140 schools. Even though BAM’s journey in the UK has only just begun, its impact is already being felt by our team.
“I wasn't expecting to be so into it. I'm very personally invested in it. It has inspired me, and I wish I had BAM when I was younger. I’m very personally impacted by it. It's taken me on a journey. My philosophy around evaluation is built on the work I've done in BAM. BAM was my first test ground for trying out some of these things that I believe in now as an evaluator. In terms of my personal growth and the journey I've been on, BAM has been the central part of that professionally.
I guess what surprised me is how much it means to me. I'm inspired by the people that deliver it. I'm from Lambeth, I grew up there, it's being delivered around the corner from where I grew up. It’s an area that really needs it,” concludes Finlay.
Keep up to date with our work to improve outcomes for children and young people, using research, service design and evidence to inform learning, and practice. There’s lots more learning we’d love to share with you around BAM and we hope to present some of our findings and materials soon, so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest news from the Lab, as we embed systems change and evidence to create a deeper understanding of the issues young people face and their communities.