Today is #InternationalMensDay, meaning that your newsfeed may be dominated by people decrying the need for it because men already have it really easy. It’s harder to be a woman, yes, with 40 per cent of murdered women dying at the hands of a male ex-lover, a gender gap that supposedly won’t right itself for over a century, and that whole nine months carrying around another human being in your stomach, but there is one issue that disproportionately affects men: suicide.

It may be something of a luxury that the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 is themselves – with an average of 12 men taking their life every day in the UK – but it’s a serious mental health epidemic that’s somewhat ignored. Jane Powell, the CEO of the Capaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), explains that men are more destructive depressives than women, and more likely to drink or do drugs rather than seek help.

“The research is clear that men behave differently to women when depressed,” she writes. “Men are more likely to end up on a drunken binge and being arrested rather than seeing a GP about their emotional problems. And yet there is no strategy to reach out to men, despite the fact that gender is a significant risk factor for suicide.” Studies show that men would rather keep quiet because of shame, or not wanting to create fuss.

Suicide and severe mental health issues are both things very close to my friendship group and my family. But only the men. When I recall things I said in attempts to help, sometimes my stomach lurches, embarrassed by the inadequacy of my advice, the “hope you’re OKs”, the “Nah, I’ll be fines” and my helplessness in attempting to deal with another person’s helpnessness. Of course, conversationally, these are difficult terrains to navigate, but men need help in learning how to help, as well as direction on how to discuss their own personal mental health problems. In the past, I have found myself bottling up over these kind of issues.

For the most part – and this is only my own experience – women appear to be much more adept at openly discussing feelings of sadness with each other, offering guidance, emotional comfort and a strong support network. For whatever reason, possibly embedded societal gender roles, men struggle to offer the same foundations, silenced by a false concept of strength, stunted by the idea that to be suicidal is to be soppy.

So today is #InternationalMensDay, marked politically by a male suicide debate in the House of Commons. It should not be hijacked by boring men’s rights activists tweeting things like “finally”, ’cos let’s face it fellas, we got it pretty good. But male suicide is a real issue, so if there’s any one thing we should discuss on this day and in the future, it’s this.