There are many prejudices that are held beliefs based usually but not always on no truth whatsoever. The difference between ignorance and prejudice, or faith, is when evidence is presented it is ignored and the prejudice continued to be held.
I'm not going to fuck about. The example is the idea that men don't seek help for their mental health problems. Its a prejudice I held till I was tasked with the futile effort to find research to back this up. I searched high and low. I read information from a variety of studies and reviews and caused myself a large amount of distress for my incapability to find out where the evidence was behind the idea the men don't seek help for mental health problems.
I was guilty of that cardinal sin of research: bias. In fact it helped to drive me to search for this piece of evidence. Every time I found hard evidence instead of an unproven hypothesis based on anecdotes and more unproven hypotheses (yes, I read a lot of sociology) it drove me to look harder rather than sit in complacency.
Eventually the obvious hit me: I couldn't find any difference in the levels of help seeking for mental health between genders. Every piece of evidence that was suggested supported the idea, primarily the "men visit their GPs 50% less than women" from Living in Britain (and the British Housepanels Survey data) and the 3 times higher suicide rate could be explained away. The data from the 2001 BHPS was only true for working age (18-65) and the trend was the opposite above working age. It is easy to guess that in 2001 more men worked than women and fewer GP practices opened late and Living in Britain authors also acknowledged that women may visit more for family planning and pregnancy.
The suicide rate is well known. The attempted suicide rate is also well know. It has been noted that men choose more violent methods and this is why there is a difference in the completed rate (though I'm still not sure that this is true) but the rate of attempts is higher in women. The piece of evidence I did find on help seeking for suicide showed an interesting result. The Samaritans recieved about 2.8 million answered calls every year and have done so for about a decade. Every year for the last decade there have been approximately equal calls from men and women (in fact calls from men were fractionally higher).
The best quality study that used evidence to look at help seeking for mental health also showed similar results. A survey sent to 13,000 people with 11,000 returns asked for attitudes from a rural population The authors noted statistically insignificant differences in overall levels though there were some noteable differences when looking at the detail. This was a peer-reviewed study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry and was the only one of its kind in the UK.
Its not the quality of evidence I would hope for because it is based on intent rather than behaviour. The Samaritans data is actual behaviour. It was also of a rural population so may not reflect the average accurately. These two pieces of data alone are very strong and much moreso than the poorly understood examples used to justify the prejudice.
The prejudice was very strong. The organisation I worked for I used to believe in and this process broke than image. They conducted their own research by conducting a poll on people's help seeking behaviour. The prototyped survey was run to test the questions but the results from the experiment backed up the idea that there was little difference in the overall levels of help seeking for mental health problems between the genders. This caused much concern. I'm unaware if the questions were adjusted because of this or not but the full survey went out anyway to 2000 people. It returned showing the same thing: no significant differences in overall levels, though there was an difference in the levels of help seeking from GPs with men less likely to see a GP.
And yet a national campaign ran that told men they should seek help for mental health problems more. I should have quit at that point.
This was one of the worst things to happen to me that year. It broke my ideal of the organisation I worked for. Perhaps that was necessary but it was a brutal process.
And they're still fucking promoting that same fucking prejudice.
They did it for the right reasons which is why I didn't take more serious action because this sort of behaviour is exactly what gives science a bad reputation and its a thing I hate: evidence use to create lies. Eventually I let it be know to the organisation that this was something I thought was wrong but to no avail. They still promote that prejudice. They waste the donations of their members (I stopped my after this incident) and put it towards promoting their own bullshit, even when the evidence presented to them shows that their view is ignorance.
Today I've seen yet another example of them promoting this prejudice. Its a small thing. Its in amongst a page detailing other important work. But I'm still so clouded by this one failure of theirs that I was part of that I find it hard to see the rest of their good work.
There's a quote that goes something along the lines of "Tyranny will continue if good men stay silent." I've failed that. I could speak up about this now but my sense has taken hold. Its not worth it. Its a small issue. They do a lot of other good work. Its a storm in a teacup. The lives of the mentally ill are more important the damage public action could do to the organisations brand is far too great a cost because they do a lot of good work and help thousands of people.
I suppose I know my future better or what I need to change. I need to have the backbone and the wisdom to know which battles to fight. The latter makes me think that I should leave this one alone. The former makes me think that next time I will say my piece stronger and more effectively so that prejudice will not stand.
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