With this week marking the start of Men’s Mental Health Month, male leaders from across the Ottawa business community gathered for the third consecutive year for a candid and emotional conversation about their own struggles and how they’ve learned to heal.
Hosted Tuesday morning at Bayview Yards, the event was organized by Dare to be Vulnerable, an Ottawa non-profit that asks some of the community’s most successful people to share their journeys with mental health to help “break the stigma” that leaves many suffering in silence.
“We did our first (men’s mental health talk) in June 2023 and it was our best-attended yet,” founder Susan Blain told OBJ. “You heard me say I have a soft spot for men. It’s Men’s Mental Health Month, but once a year isn’t enough. We want to do more.”
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While speakers are introduced by their professional titles, Blain also highlights their other roles in life as fathers, husbands, uncles and sons. Then she lists just some of the mental health struggles they’ve disclosed, from depression to burnout, financial stress to relationship struggles, as well as anxiety and thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
It’s an exercise, she said, that goes to the heart of what the organization is asking leaders to do: be vulnerable, share their stories and show others that they aren’t alone.
Tuesday marked the third time Calian CEO Kevin Ford, who kicked off the morning, has attended the event. He told attendees that he hesitated to agree.
“But I thought about the last time I was here,” he said. “I thought of the impact. This event – I’ve had people come up to me after and say thank you. They’ve been struggling and they just needed to know that it’s OK.”
Through awareness and an increase in conversation about men’s mental health, Ford said the discussion has changed dramatically in recent years.
“If we could talk about things that I can tell you right now, if we could’ve talked about them 20 years ago, my father and brother-in-law would still be here,” said Ford. “We cannot go back to a place where the stigma of this discussion prevents events like this from happening. We cannot. That’s why I decided to show up.”
Leaders open up about mental health journeys
Research shows that mental health has become a major concern, both in general and in the workplace.
In Blain’s presentation, she highlighted some of the most startling recent statistics, including that 500,000 Canadian employees miss work each week due to mental health issues and 70 per cent of employers say they are concerned about mental health in the workplace.
When it comes to men’s mental health, she said that while women attempt suicide three to four times more often than men, 75 per cent of suicides involve men. Forty-nine per cent of men, she said, also score above the threshold for major depression and one in five reported thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
Real estate broker Paul Rushforth, who played 10 years as a professional hockey player, highlighted how stressors like injury, workplace abuse, addiction and financial difficulties piled on top of each other.
“I’m an attempted suicide survivor and it was only through the grace of God that I was saved. I was minutes away from not being here. It was years ago but that was my low point. I remember looking in the mirror and I just saw a monster,” he said.
“It’s something that I’m not embarrassed to talk about … I do view things differently now. I can look in the mirror and see a beautiful person. I see a flawed, beautiful human.”
As part of a panel, Rushforth was joined by Yasser Ghazi, vice-president of commercial financial services for RBC; Michel Nungisa, lead counsel and workplace investigator of his firm Nungisa Law; and Eric Deschamps, co-founder of Rhapsody Strategies and host of the Living Richly podcast.
Deschamps said his childhood, his relationships with his parents and difficult experiences with the church spiraled into loneliness and isolation in his adult life. Though he learned to hide it publicly, he said uncertainty and depression lingered.
“Being the guy at the front of the room who’s supposed to have it all together, smiling on the outside – I was trying to help others but I couldn’t and didn’t even know how to help myself,” he said.
Deschamps commended the people who spoke at and attended the event for joining the conversation, something he said is the hardest part of healing, especially for men.
“For a long time, I was doing just enough work to get back in the game. Like, put me back in, coach, I’ll be fine! I finally went deeper and did enough work that I changed the game so fundamentally that I changed my relationship with myself,” he said.
“(I’m trying to) help men in leadership find a safe place to finally drop the mask, stop posturing, stop pretending and realize that you have brothers that are going through the exact same thing as you are. You don’t have to do it alone and together we can pretty much overcome anything.”
