05/12/2025
Heartbreaking news from ManHealth. After ten years of supporting thousands of men and saving lives across our region, their male only peer support groups will cease in December because the funding simply isn’t there. This is happening despite everything we already know — 76% of su***des are men, only a small number get the support they need, and men are at higher risk of early death, addiction, homelessness and poor mental health.
As funders who have backed this vital work, we have to ask why. Even after Sam Rushworth, MP for Bishop Auckland took Paul Bannister to No.10 to raise these concerns as part of the new 10-year strategy, there is still no dedicated funding to keep these groups going.
ManHealth has been a lifeline for so many men and it's still required. It’s devastating to see this happen, and we can’t afford to stay quiet about it.
OPEN LETTER FROM MANHEALTH CIC - URGENT
After a decade of service to thousands of men and families in the North East of England we share this message with deep sadness and profound gratitude.
Due to relentless financial pressures including a sharp decline in funding success, a reduction in training bookings, and falling donations and fundraising income, ManHealth will have to suspend its male only peer support group programme in December. Ironically exactly 10 years after our formation.
For ten years, our groups have provided safe, stigma-free spaces for men across County Durham and the North East, places where honesty replaced silence, and connection replaced despair. Thousands of men have shared their stories, found hope, and supported one another through some of the hardest moments of their lives.
To every man who walked through our doors, thank you. Your courage, vulnerability, and honesty have inspired us every single day.
To our core team and facilitators, we owe a debt of gratitude. Your dedication, empathy, and lived experience made ManHealth more than an organisation, you made it a lifeline.
Although this chapter ends, ManHealth itself will not. We will continue to advocate, educate, and campaign for men and boys because someone must.
And we must say this clearly and without apology:
We are ending our groups not because the need has gone, but because of the complete apathy towards men’s issue’s in our society.
We live in a country where:
• Three out of four su***des (76%) are by men and su***de remains the leading cause of death for men under 35.
• Only 12% of men who need mental health support receive it.
• Around 1 in 5 men (20%) die before the age of 65.
• Men are twice as likely as women to die prematurely from cardiovascular disease.
• Men have a 37% higher risk of dying from cancer than women.
• Men are three times more likely than women to be alcohol dependent.
• 87% of rough sleepers and 73% of adults who go missing are men.
• Men are less likely to seek help, and those aged 45–59 report the lowest life satisfaction of any group in the UK.
These are not statistics they are fathers, brothers, sons, and friends. And yet their suffering continues, hidden behind silence and stigma.
For years, we have shown the evidence and told the truth but too often, what has met us is apathy. The truth is uncomfortable, so it is ignored. The evidence is credible, but inconvenient. The suffering is visible, but unnamed.
Why have we failed our boys and men so completely?
Why is their pain met with silence?
Why is there still no gendered approach to the issues that most harm men — su***de, addiction, homelessness, heart disease, and early death?
Why are the testimonies of experts, charities, and communities who know this crisis so often dismissed or denied?
We rightly rally when women suffer but when men die in their thousands, we bury the statistics, not the cause. That silence from government both central and local, public health, funders, media, and much of society is not neutrality. It is complicity.
ManHealth has spent ten years doing what others would not: giving men a voice, a space, and a chance. We should not be ending groups that save lives. Yet here we are.
Still, this is not the end. We will keep speaking truth to power, keep challenging indifference, and keep fighting for a society that values its men and boys as much as it says it does.
To every man, supporter, and friend who has stood with us over these ten years thank you. You mattered. You made a difference. And together, we showed what compassion, honesty, and courage can achieve.
We may no longer run groups, but our mission continues to stand up for men, to demand change, and to never again let this silence go unchallenged.
Paul Bannister
Chief Executive, ManHealth CIC
