Strong Silent Types-Stuff About Men masculinity, madness, sexuality & suicide

This Wednesday is ‘ANZAC Day’ in Australia, a day on which we remember those men and women who marched bravely off to war and especially those who did not return. For those who did, a necessary myth of the unrelenting war machine is that just as young soldiers must be honourably blown to bits by lan

The second ‘Private Lives‘ study here in Australia has confirmed that us pewfs are totally fucking mad and are getting madder, still, by the minute. This report conveniently apportions absolute blame for our burgeoning psychopathology to ‘heterosexism’… ‘There is now a well established body of resea

‘In one initiation ceremony, called ‘Two Men’, first year students are stripped to their underwear and forced into the middle of a circle where they must wrestle another student with the aim of removing their underwear‘ Over the past few days, the Fairfax press here in Sydney has run several explora

Honkola J, Hookana E, Malinen S, Kaikkonen KS, Junttila MJ, Isohanni M, Kortelainen ML, & Huikuri HV (2012). Psychotropic medications and the risk of sudden cardiac death during an acute coronary event. European heart journal, 33 (6), 745-51 PMID: 21920969 What do you do when you discover that the m

For the uninitiated, Queensland is stuck in the deep north of Australia and stands rank as an embarrassing social, cultural and political backwater. When foreigners (and to Queenslanders, anyone not born in that state and who is not also white, straight and Christian, is a foreigner) comment that th

Zietsch BP, Verweij KJ, Heath AC, Madden PA, Martin NG, Nelson EC, & Lynskey MT (2012). Do shared etiological factors contribute to the relationship between sexual orientation and depression? Psychological medicine, 42 (3), 521-32 PMID: 21867592 We are bombarded with an ever-worsening picture of gay

Coleman, D., Kaplan, M., & Casey, J. (2011). The Social Nature of Male Suicide: A New Analytic Model International Journal of Men’s Health, 10 (3), 240-252 DOI: 10.3149/jmh.1003.240 Male suicide is a highly emotive topic. Few of us like to talk openly about any sort of death, let alone when someone

Reinhard, D., Konrath, S., Lopez, W. & Cameron, H. (2012). Expansive Egos: Narcissistic Males Have Higher Cortisol PLOS One, 7 (1) Narcissism is a funny ‘personality trait’ (2012, n.pag.) and an even funnier mental illness, since the prime condition of being irreversibly and unquestionably stuck up

Jorm, A., & Reavley, N. (2012). Changes in psychological distress in Australian adults between 1995 and 2011 Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry DOI: 10.1177/0004867411428017 As the Australian Government rolls out its 10 year ‘roadmap‘ for mental health reform, research by Jorm and Reav

Del Giudice M, Booth T, & Irwing P (2012). The distance between Mars and venus: measuring global sex differences in personality. PloS one, 7 (1) PMID: 22238596 Where I live in Sydney City is fast becoming the young pewf capital of the world, which is something of a mixed blessing for an ageing queen