EARLIER THIS YEAR, after ufc contender Paddy Pimblett bested Jordan Leavitt with a secondround submission at London’s O2 Arena, he inadvertently assumed instant leadership in the campaign for men’s mental health. In the post-match elegy he made to his friend Ricky, who just hours before the weigh-in had taken his own life, Pimblett spoke the central truth all psychotherapists work from.
“Listen,” said the champ. “If you’re a man and you’ve got weight on your shoulders, and you think the only way you can solve it is by killing yourself, please speak to someone. Speak to anyone.” Pimblett continued, a look of immaculate sincerity in his eyes, “I’d rather me mate cried on me shoulder than go to his funeral next week. Men: start talking.”
The crowd went wild. It was a spectacle, a rare outbreak of truth-telling in our often superficial era. Of course, we don’t know what direct effect Pimblett's words had on viewers - or what effect they might have had on Ricky. Nor can we know for sure the condition of mind of a person who decides to take their own life, or what mixture of dread, difficulty and despair took them there.
But Pimblett’s words revealed what we do know to be true. Suicide bequeaths an enormous and unanswerable complex of ‘whys’. A person’s reasons for taking their life can be as unique as their fingerprint. We also know that suicide remains the leading cause of death among men under 50; numbers have been falling for some years, but they recently
