PAUSE AND EFFECT

My focus was gone,” explains Lee Roby. “I was putting things off, and I’m normally a very proactive and enthusiastic person. It felt that things I could deal with easily were becoming a problem and felt harder to tackle.”

Roby is one of a growing number of men who have chosen to face down one of the great unspoken issues facing men today: andropause. The progressive decline of testosterone and other key hormones, it’s a condition that is sometimes dubbed the ‘male menopause’, and it’s one that can have a material impact on men’s mental health.

“Andropause is a better term than male menopause,” explains Dr Ghazala Aziz-Scott from the Marion Gluck Clinic. “Male menopause is misleading, because it suggests the symptoms are a result of a sudden drop in testosterone, similar to the relatively rapid fall women experience