St. Albert students have joined the city’s CAO in a quest to grow moustaches for men’s health.
Lois E. Hole Elementary students were among the thousands of Canadians sporting moustaches this month for Movember — a charitable challenge that uses moustaches to raise awareness of men’s mental health and prostate and testicular cancer.
The Movember challenge sees men raise money by attempting to grow spectacular moustaches in November, starting from a clean shaven face on Nov. 1.
Teachers Mat Knoll and Mark Rouault were co-ordinating the Movember campaign at Lois Hole Elementary, where students were selling moustache bracelets and stick-on moustaches as a fundraiser.
“It’s just fun for the kids to wear moustaches around school,” Knoll said.
Knoll said this year’s moustache drive was off to a slow start because an unusual number of students were sick at home. The school had yet to set a fundraising goal for this year’s Movember. Past years have seen teachers get their heads shaved or faces pied as incentives to bring in the dollars.
City of St. Albert CAO Bill Fletcher has challenged his staff to Outgrow the CAO this year for Movember — a challenge he predicted he would lose, as he had never grown a decent moustache in his life.
“It’s genetics. I blame my parents.”
Fletcher said he had no moustache-growing strategy apart from “a whole lot of ignorant optimism.”
“I’m really just going to rely on force of will.”
A four-year Movember veteran, Knoll had already managed to grow a wispy crop of lip hair as of Nov. 7. He advised moustache rookies to comb their moustaches regularly and to remember to wipe them off after a drink.
Mental health
Fletcher said Movember was a tongue-in-cheek way to talk about serious male health issues such as cancer and mental illness.
“Mental health and suicide are a concern for everyone,” he said, and have impacts across friends and families.
Men are three times more likely than woman to die from suicide, said Pascal Dumoulin, St. Albert resident and campus wellness co-ordinator at Concordia University of Edmonton, citing data from the Mental Health Commission of Canada. About 75 per cent of the roughly 4,000 Canadians who commit suicide each year are men.
“That’s an average of 50 men per week,” Dumoulin noted.
One big reason for this is masculine norms of behaviour, Dumoulin said. Social norms portray men as self-reliant people who don’t show emotion or talk about their problems, which leads many to feel ashamed or embarrassed to admit when they are struggling. Men tend to have less emotional literacy than women when it comes to identifying and responding to feelings, which can lead to frustration, anger, depression, crime, and substance abuse. Many also lack close friends they can draw upon for support.
Dumoulin said the St. Albert Menship group was working to address these issues by providing a safe place for men to discuss feelings and work on social bonds.
Knoll said one way to address mental health issues in men was to be a good listener. He held regular check-ins with his students and encouraged them to share their feelings with each other.
Visit ca.movember.com for details on Movember.
