Putnam: Is your guy irritable? Angry? Here’s a website that could help

LANSING – A researcher wants more working-age men in mid-Michigan to get screened for depression and suicide risk.

She also wants to find out if “man therapy” works.

That’s a different way of treating depression, acknowledging that guys aren’t the same as women.

Men often have the “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” mentality, said Dr. Jodi Frey, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work.

They don’t talk to their friends or spill their guts to their doctors as much as women. And men are more likely to be irritable and angry when they’re depressed.

Michigan men are also four times more likely to die by suicide than women. 

The online screening tool and suicide prevention project, Healthy Men Michigan, is an opportunity to get them help. It’s aimed at identifying those at risk of suicide, offering them information on where to go for help and also creating a pool of men for research.

“People tend to be more honest in online screening than they would on the phone or in person,” Frey said.

Healthy Men Michigan is a four-year project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now in its second year. More than 1,700 people have been screened.

“Our goal is to have men use it as resource any time of the night or day, to go online and get some immediate feedback and support,” Frey said.

Part of the “man therapy” Frey wants to research is the effectiveness of messages that taking care of your mental health is a manly, not a weak, thing to do.

The project uses male-dominated workplaces to spread the word.

Jeff Elhart, president of Elhart Automotive Campus, a family car dealership in Holland, said he’s used the tool with his staff of 108, and also connected them to a West Michigan mental health project called Be Nice. It’s an acronym that offers instruction on how to intercede when you think someone is at risk.

Elhart’s beloved brother, Wayne, 60, died from suicide in 2015. Since then, Jeff Elhart has worked to prevent the heartbreak for other families. He’s on the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, a public-private partnership.

His brother was the Robin Williams of the family, Elhart said.

“He was a fun-loving guy. He loved to socialize. He was the life of the party. He loved to boat and he loved to ski,” Elhart recalled.

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Then he became depressed. He stopped drinking and socializing and didn’t put his boat in the water the summer before his death.

Jeff Elhart nudged his brother to his primary care doctor and got him going back to church but that wasn’t enough. He needed professional mental health intervention.

“I should have said, 'Wayne, I noticed these things about you. I’m very concerned. I love you. Are you thinking of killing yourself?' That’s the question you have to ask,” Elhart said. “They want to kill the pain, they don’t want to kill themselves.”

In a note discovered more than a year after he died, Wayne Elhart asked his family to use his death to help others.

Healthy Men Michigan has 200 partners statewide, including 19 in the mid-Michigan area, and is searching for more through public service announcements and social media.

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Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in Michigan, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. 

A national report released last week predicted Michigan’s preventable deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide will increase dramatically over the next decade. The "Pain in the Nation" study by Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust, projected the increases based on current trends.

“Unfortunately what we’ve been doing about suicide isn’t working,” Frey, the Healthy Men Michigan researcher, said. “The rates are increasing.”

For more information and to access the screening, go to healthymenmichigan.org/. The Be Nice project information is at benice.org/be-nice.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on twitter @judyputnam.