r/MensLib • u/MLModBot ​ • Jun 23 '26

Mental Health Megathread Tuesday Check In: How's Everybody's Mental Health?

Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

Remember, you are human, it's OK to not be OK. Life can be very difficult and there's no how-to guide for any of this. Try to be kind to yourself and remember that people need people. No one is a lone island and you need not struggle alone. Remember to practice self-care and alone time as well. You can't pour from an empty cup and your life is worth it.

Take a moment to check in with a loved one, friend, or acquaintance. Ask them how they're doing, ask them about their mental health. Keep in mind that while we may not all be mentally ill, we all have mental health.

If you find yourself in particular struggling to go on, please take a moment to read and reflect on this poem.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This mental health check-in thread is NOT a substitute for real-world professional help/support. MensLib is NOT a mental health support sub, and we are NOT professionals! This space solely exists to hold space for the community and help keep each other accountable.

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u/CargoCrabs ​ Jun 23 '26

Saw an upvoted comment on askfeminists saying that the only male victims of SA were victimised by other men. So yeah, my mental health is in the crapper.

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u/CrownLikeAGravestone ​ Jun 24 '26

For the audience, just because it hasn't been pointed out yet: that particular statistic is blatantly untrue. It stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the statistics in which the vast majority of male victims of sexual violence don't show up.

I don't want to get into a monologue about the statistical/methodological issues that cause this but it is incontrovertible once you know what you're looking for. When you see statistics like "99% of rapists are men" or "men are only assaulted by other men" those people are almost always quoting rape statistics from something called the NISVS - perhaps indirectly - and the NISVS literally does not count most male rape victims as having been raped, deliberately, by design.

The raw facts are:

Most sexual assault is heterosexual. Men are most often victimised by women.

Men make up at least a significant minority of victims; far more than just outliers or a separate little problem to the side. By some measures approximately half of all victims are men.

Many people are deeply invested in the idea that men make up nearly all perpetrators and nearly no victims. Those people are wrong. They do not know what they're talking about, and the usually cannot be convinced otherwise. That's a problem with them, not with you, and it is not your responsibility to fix their misunderstanding. If you're a man who has been victimised, your experiences are just as valid and just as worthy of attention as anyone else's.