All right,

welcome to the show,

Dr.

Ogronichuk.

Thank you so much for being with us.

How are you doing today?

We're doing great,

Simon,

and yourself?

Doing good,

yeah.

I'm excited to learn more about Heads Up Guys and

the incredible work that you all do there.

So why don't we just kick off a little bit about

your experience,

your background,

and yeah,

do a little bit of a back check on you.

Sure.

I'm a professor of psychiatry at the University of

British Columbia here in Vancouver,

and I'm also the director of the psychotherapy

program where we train psychiatry residents for,

you know,

a good chunk of the country,

actually.

We're the second largest program in North America,

I think,

behind only Toronto.

So we are involved in shaping,

you know,

to a good extent,

psychiatric services as they're delivered in Canada.

And I started up Heads Up Guys,

which we'll be talking about six years ago.

Well,

we launched six years ago.

We actually started earlier,

took quite a bit of time to develop that resource.

Amazing.

So people who don't know what Heads Up Guys is,

can you give us a little bit of like,

you know,

a little paragraph of what it is?

Sure.

Well,

very simply,

it's an online resource to support guys with

depression.

And,

you know,

the.

The impetus for that was really multifactorial.

I've had a private psychotherapy practice for 20

some years now,

and a large part of my practice is always focused

on men.

Men don't tend to go to mental health services all

that often.

And I thought that was really unusual because it's

not indicating that they're any more healthy than

women.

It's just that they're not going.

And when they do go.

They often find the services aren't really quite

meeting their needs.

So I found this was a very interesting space to

work in.

And more than 10 years ago,

a colleague,

John Olive,

who's also here at UBC,

he and I started Canada's first men's mental health

research program.

Still,

I believe the only such program in Canada.

And we learned a lot and we learned a lot from

men about,

you know,

what their needs are.

And what their needs are.

You know,

how they can be met,

how they're not being met.

And one of the,

you know,

very striking data points,

if you will,

regarding men's mental health is suicide.

It's like men account for about 75% of suicide

deaths in Canada and in most other countries across

the globe.

Also,

with regard to that,

for young men,

like under the age of 35.

Suicide is actually the second leading cause of

death.

And no one talks about this.

I had no idea.

That's an incredible statistic.

No one seems to because we literally don't talk

about it.

So we felt we really needed to do something to

address this.

You know,

if it was some other issue,

I'm sure it'd be,

you know,

a known public health issue,

a crisis,

if you will.

So we're trying to do our part to raise awareness

about this issue.

And also help address it.

And one of the things that we thought we would

try to do is address the issue of depression in

men,

because we do know that untreated or poorly treated

depression amongst guys is one of the strongest

risk factors for suicide.

So we thought one of the upstream ways of tackling

suicide amongst men is addressing depression and

going to the Internet.

The online space is a is a place where.

We thought we could connect with guys because we

do know that people,

men,

women,

everyone often will turn to the Internet first.

If they feel something's amiss with their health,

they'll type in some symptoms,

see what comes up.

And there were virtually no resources out there for

men with depression.

So we thought we'd try to fill that space a bit.

Yeah,

that's such an interesting gap in the mental health

market.

And it's remarkable.

That,

you know,

six years ago,

you launched this this program,

so it's still it's still relatively fresh,

new idea and the fact that you're coupling that

with with with research as well,

and you're able to see these data points to like,

you know,

where where men are kind of like missing out in

their lives and where they can potentially focus to

to to gain that their their mental health back.

Are there any particular data points you mentioned

in this research program like the like fundamental

needs?

Yeah,

we developed a stress test for our site,

and that's based on a broad array of research

that's been conducted around common stressors in

people's lives,

but there was nothing specific regarding men.

So we developed one that we wanted to get,

you know,

men's perspectives of stressors in their lives.

We developed this for there's a 19 or 20 point

checklist.

We're starting different types of stressors,

we've had more than 50,000 guys complete this

since we launched it in 2019.

And from that,

what we've discovered is that two most frequently

endorsed stressors in men's lives are lack of

purpose or meaning in life and loneliness.

Wow,

yeah,

I mean,

considering the last couple of years with isolation

and lockdowns,

you know,

like how,

how much have you seen like traffic change over

the last couple of years?

In regards to COVID-19?

Well,

at first,

we took a big hit in our traffic,

as did most mental health websites,

because no one was talking about mental health when

COVID first struck.

And it's like,

what on earth is COVID?

How can I catch it?

Am I going to die from it?

It was all these things that and,

you know,

people were really concerned.

And so mental health,

in a way,

took a backseat to that.

We weren't really relevant in that space.

And it took some time in order for,

you know,

life to really fundamentally change and for us to

feel the impacts of these health policies that were

put in place to mitigate the spread of the virus,

and unbeknownst to all of us.

And it's like,

oh,

my God,

there's massive social mental health implications

because of these measures that were put in place.

And all of a sudden,

then people started talking about mental health much

more publicly.

And then,

you know,

we became relevant again and can contribute to that

conversation.

So our traffic is not only back to where it was,

but is increasing.

You know,

we get about 65,000 people a month coming to the

website from all over the world.

Yeah,

that's amazing.

And I'm so glad that that's available.

And personally,

I've never really experienced anxiety.

Anxiety or depression and kind of like a long

-winded unknown from an unknown source.

But the last year,

without question,

has been very,

very stressful on me and my family,

you know,

like what's going on.

So I've started to feel the impacts and feeling

these emotions come up in very,

very strange ways.

And for a lot of people who have never really

experienced that biochemical change that comes with

something like depression or anxiety,

it can be a really scary place.

And it's so great that you're able to,

you know,

look into Google.

And with SEO and everything,

you know,

you can come to your site.

And I know you've got this like quiz that you can

take kind of like right away.

It's like the first thing you see,

it's really abundant and orange and beautiful.

And you can just go straight to it.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

I think it's called the self-check.

Yep,

it's called the self-check.

And this is based on,

it's called the PHQ-9,

which is probably the most well-used depression

screening tool in the world.

And so it's 9-7.

It's very simple items,

which correspond to the diagnostic criteria for

major depression.

You take the self-check.

It's very quick and easy to do.

And the score is provided at the end.

And there'll be some context around what that score

means for you and what potential next steps are

for you.

So if you're scoring very high,

we direct you one way.

If it's moderate,

another.

If not so high,

it's still a third.

So it's a third kind of direction around what you

can and should do.

But,

you know,

I really encourage people to use it if they're

coming to our site.

We've had over 300,000 people do it,

which is huge.

Yeah,

that's great.

Yeah.

And you can use that information to cultivate and

change the site a little bit to see what people

are looking for,

what they're missing,

and provide that information from the information

that they're filling out.

So,

again,

it kind of feeds itself in this really positive

way.

Yep.

And so what we know is that sleep is really

impacted heavily by depression,

and it can work vice versa.

When your sleep's not good,

it puts you at greater risk for depression.

And so we have a wide variety of different

articles around different kinds of symptoms and life

areas,

and all of them are shaped around self-help.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we have a number on sleep.

In fact,

there's a practical tips section,

which is really the meaty part of the self-help

area of our website.

And we have one section that's fully dedicated to

sleep.

Amazing.

So how much of the kind of recommendations or

these foundational items are based around,

like,

self-personal responsibilities?

All of it.

All of it.

Okay.

Because we're each responsible for our own health.

Sure.

Well,

you know,

and I want to clarify,

you know,

guys have a tendency to be really self-reliant.

You know,

I can figure this crap out on my own.

I'll do it.

Don't worry about me.

And we say depression is a beast that you should

not and cannot tackle on your own.

You need to build a team around you.

Oh,

yeah.

But you're the GM and the coach still.

You've got to pull this all together.

It's your responsibility.

No one's approaching you as if you're broken and

you need to be.

You're the one that's guiding this ship.

And that's really important for guys to know,

because one of the big challenges for them is

feeling that they've lost control.

But we're saying you are in control.

So everything that you're going to find on our

site,

if you don't take responsibility and control,

no one's going to do it for you.

Yeah,

that's great.

I recall in my midterms.

I'm 37 now,

and I think I grew up playing a lot of team

sports,

and that's probably a really good outlet for a lot

of a lot of aggression at that time,

I suppose.

But I think team sports is a way of being part

of a community,

and it's a really great way,

a really great thing for your mental health.

And I just remember my elder brother in my mid

-twenties talked to me about that idea about asking

for help,

asking for support and being open to receiving it,

and how he told me one of the most intelligent

questions that you can ask yourself.

You can ask somebody is,

you know,

I don't know how to do this.

Can you help me?

You know,

so laying down the egotistical idea of like,

I know everything and I can do everything.

I'm super capable and I can take on the world.

But being vulnerable and open to learning new

information and being able to put that into your

life that that certainly changed my journey in

regards to how open I was to getting some getting

support from different people,

whether that was for my mental health or.

wise or just to improve my ability as a human

being in different aspects having support from

different people is without question one of the

best things you can do kind of like early on is

to kind of lay that egotistical side down exactly

and it's so important for guys to know that asking

for a hand doesn't mean you're weak or not good

enough in some aspect in fact it means you

recognize there's a gap and you're seeking resources

to help fill that gap and so again

it gets back to you're you're in control in this

just because i may ask you for a hand doesn't

mean

i'm incompetent and do you do you find it um so

when you started well you've been working as a

psychotherapist for 20 plus years do you see it

easier for men to talk to another guy about these

type of things because

you

i don't know how heavily i don't know what the

ratio is in the in the psychotherapy industry of

like male to to female practitioners but i feel

like a lot of men would be a lot it'd be a lot

easier for them to open up to it to another guy

is that is that true or is that i'm just making

that up yeah well a you know the the first part

about proportions of male and female therapists

there's a lot more female therapists out there so

the probability of a man connecting with a

female therapist is pretty high just based on the

basis of the numbers right out there and we've

actually done research looking at preferences for

male or female therapists and it's kind of split

you know there's a group of guys that you know

have a very definite preference for a male

therapist

some have a preference for female therapists and

then there's others i don't care

and we really don't know yet what distinguishes

these guys

but uh you know i know anecdotally from my own

experience a lot of guys come to me because i'm a

guy and and uh and even with young guys you know

adolescent males i have parents reaching out to me

because it said it's really hard to find a male

therapist and you know my son wants to connect

with a guy and so there's clearly that need out

there and certainly for young men there's a

sense of mentorship that comes with it because i

hear it so often even from older gents and it's

like i never had a positive male influence in my

life and so i don't know what it's like to be a

good dad i just don't know what it's like to be

a good man because the models that i had if i

had any

weren't all that great i think that's such a huge

point you know growing up as a as a as a young

boy

influences around you is so important in regards to

like having a mentor learning you know what to

say what to do what to behave and you know being

able to make mistakes and kind of being put in

check like those things are so paramount in regards

to our ability to become you know fully

functional adults and i just wonder in regards to

like the historical idea of you know stiff upper

men don't show emotions don't have time for that i

don't know if that's like like a wartime thing

there was like no time there was obviously a

generation where there was literally like no time

to sit down and talk about your feelings because

you know there was impending doom coming around

the corner and then now we don't have those type

of threats but we've obviously you know we we

inherit genes but we also inherit behaviors from

our dads and our grandfathers etc and etc so are

we are we going through like do you think this is

like transitional period where now because you see

you see it all over the place especially in like

in like tv where you see these

male

characters you know opening up more and being a

lot more vulnerable and talking about their

feelings i think it's a really healthy place to be

absolutely so have you got like ideas in regards

to like the historical implications of this type of

like kind of wave that we see yeah you know

it's interesting speculation around the the effect

of war on that you know what you're describing

it's called masculine socialization you know how

boys are taught to be men and you know we really

don't know where it came from you know the the

the thought around the war impact and it makes a

lot of sense but we know this is quite a

universal phenomenon across the globe including

places that

haven't experienced war or you know i i'm sure

you're talking about the two world wars so that

masculine socialization aspect actually occurred

occurs in countries that had no role in the other

world war so there's something more to it we don't

know what it is

we certainly know about its impact and i agree

with you we're starting to see this very slow

change you know it it is happening but it's it's

happening at a slow pace and it's going to take

you know a while i don't know how long but it

will take a while for things to fundamentally

change

uh because what we're still finding is that young

males these ideas about what it means to be a man

the stoicism not showing any

vulnerability

exists in a in a very strong way amongst young

guys even to this day so although they are

starting to be more sort of flexible and open

-minded when it comes to their own personal

health they're still very rigid about yeah what

they can and can't do so

that you know as an example if i notice that

you're not feeling well

i you know as a you know contemporary young male

and much more empathic and compassionate toward you

than perhaps in the past you know i have no

problem you know you know offering my help

and and and you know demonstrating that empathy in

different ways even if it's putting an arm

around your shoulder which may not have occurred in

the past but when it comes to me not feeling

so good i just button my lip and with my mouth

and my mouth and my mouth and my mouth and my

mouth and my

mouth and my lips

um

um

um

um

um

um

teachers or fathers or coaches or whatever it can

be very difficult place to navigate for a young

man when you are trying to compete with not only

what's going on for you internally in your own

world but also in these very important societies

peer groups it can be very very difficult to

navigate those things and i feel that yeah without

those mentors in place to help

guide that exploration things can go awry oh

absolutely and you know you know fundamentally

what we're seeing is that young males and it's not

just young males but you know if we think about

you know our future and young people becoming you

know the shapers of society

um we're still seeing personal success being

determined by being better than others

where

rather than guys saying that a good man makes

other people around them better

and that's a fundamental shift in philosophy really

and it's like i feel good because i'm

better than where it should be i feel good because

i help others around me feel good

yeah that's a really interesting point of view

especially looking at the idea of you know are

you this one person who's trying to get above the

rest of your peer groups or are you like

you know kind of like working together because you

know we know that it's you know a community

is a lot more successful when it's cohesive and

it's when it's working together and that's what

we you know when we graduate high school we go

into university and then we get into the real

world

whatever that means um we we have to we have to

have this there are kind of like rules and

structures in place within these societies that we

you know we have to kind of like work within

and we need to let we have to learn those skills

before we get into that type of game

yeah i couldn't agree more yeah all right

interesting well um other than the self-check

form which will certainly put a link up because i

think it's a very important tool and it's easy

to do and you can navigate that very simply what

type of other resources can people expect to get

from heads up guys well i mentioned the stress

test which i would really encourage because you

know it pairs well with the self-check so it's

it's one thing to get a number from the self

-check

and it's like oh my score is saying that i

actually might

be suffering from depression the self-check or the

the stress test that adds a bit of nuance

to that and it's like what are the areas in my

life that a may be impacted by depression or

similarly contributing to my depression and so

that's where it can really provide some good

context other resources you know i mentioned the

practical tips section we've got sleep

diet physical activities social life stress

management

these are really useful to look at because when

when we're suffering from depression all aspects

of life are impacted and with that in mind it's

not only important to look after those

different aspects of life to improve but that's

also a way we can mitigate risk of depression in

the first place if we look after our health in a

really wholesome kind of way amazing that's such

a great way to look at it and yeah those those

key aspects of sleep diet moving your body and

socializing without question are these core

fundamental things that as we said before you've

got a lot of self-responsibility to um to kind of

take care of and recognize that that's an area in

your life that you can improve and it's good it's

only just going to improve everything about you

what type of um what type of feedback do you do

you get from visitors to the site people who do

the self-check you know is there like an area

where i could look at kind of like comments or

reviews of um absolutely we have a testimonials

section where we put up a smattering of feedback

that we get we get feedback literally every day at

our info account and so we've we've just included

some some examples uh on there so if you go to

the bottom the footer of our uh home page you'll

see

a link to testimonials so you can click on that

and then see a number of uh the comments we've

received from visitors you know one always stands

out in mind because it hit me so hard when i saw

it in the morning it was something to the effect

of you know i'm not sure if it's a good thing or

not i just read your article on suicide we have a

number so i don't know which one he was referring

to uh thank you i'm pretty sure it just saved my

life and gave me hope for tonight and that's

pretty powerful that's unbelievable yeah that's um

yeah that's incredible and that just just goes

to show how even if even if the whole six years

was worth that that one message i think it was

probably all worth it exactly exactly where does it

go in the next five ten years well

it could go in a in a number of directions we

have more ideas than capacity right now you know

we're funded exclusively by way of donations from

the public which makes it a little bit difficult

to to plan decisively things that we can do next

because you know to be honest everything that we

do and want to do costs money and so if the

resources aren't there we simply can't develop

and grow in the way we want and so i think it's

a good thing that we're able to do that

we've been fortunate so far we've got enough

funding to keep going and we keep chipping away

at things and and you know taking opportunities

where we can to to add um but you know to say

we're going to do this next um i don't know

because we don't have the money one of the things

we have done recently we developed the therapist

directory so somebody's come to the site and said

you know what i yeah i really need to connect

with someone and i'm going to do this next

we didn't have a mechanism before to make help

make that connection but we do now

so we have therapists from our three major markets

if you will canada the united states united

kingdom and so we have therapists from each of

those three countries that are now listed on the

site so if you come there and say i want to

connect with the therapist there's a mechanism to

bring

that to life and then another feature we're

developing is a toolbox where we're developing

some uh self-help and self-help and self-help and

self-help and self-help and self-help and self

-help

modules around specific life areas or problems so

currently we're developing a module around

anger and so we're hoping to slowly build that out

over time but that will be a really interesting uh

new uh offering for for our visitors amazing just

to finish up do you have any um like book

recommendations for people to check out i don't

know i mean i'm personally a big fan of when

we're

talking about learning how to take care of yourself

and how to take care of yourself and how to take

self-responsibility and kind of like taking care of

those foundational things like you know i love

jordan peterson's work especially his last couple of

books do you have a couple do you have any like

book recommendations for for people out there that's

good honestly none at the top of my head

um put you on the spot there sorry i didn't i

didn't plan that question victor frankel's book

on meaning in life is very important because that

may not be kind of a self-help book that

you're talking about but it is an important uh

book on how we each can find and define

our purpose and our meaning and as i mentioned

earlier from our stress test we found that was

actually the number one stressor in guys lives the

most frequently endorsed stressor and guys like

so a lot of men struggle with this issue of like

why am i here what you know what meaning do i

have

what purpose can i give my time and not have a

purpose and not have a purpose and not have a

having that is is actually really frightening yeah

because then we just end up distracting

ourselves from that huge point that's inside of us

all of the time and we we end up um you're

trying to distract ourselves with many different

things and i think everybody can um understand

that that exact thought in regards to like why am

i here what's my purpose what am i going to do

what am i going to do next and it can be a

really scary thing for for many different people if

they

all that massive question and again it could be

like an embarrassing thing to ask somebody about

that you know where do you and it's such a big

question like where do you go with that but

there's

so many tools so many podcasts so many online

classes you could take so many books that you

know depending on how you prefer to take on

information and what type of message you like

to hear i feel like there is something for

everybody but again that's a self-responsibility

in regards to opening yourself up to new

information to start thinking different things

and feeling different things and behaving in

different ways and i think that's a really

that leads you to an alternative reality i suppose

yeah absolutely and i would throw in

their therapy you know therapy isn't something that

you should look at when you feel desperate

and broken it's something that you can look at and

say you know what you know i'm not living my

best life right now there's something missing or

you know i don't feel i'm the best version of

myself that i'd like to work toward therapy is

good for all of that so um it's a good

thing and it's extremely useful you know i have to

say virtually every guy that i've worked with

at some point says my god i wish i would have

done this years ago yeah absolutely well we've

just run out of time there so i want to really i

really appreciate you coming on today i really

appreciate it um how can people connect with you

or heads up guys is it just heads up guys.org

yeah there's our info account so info at heads up

guys.org that's easiest way to do it and

uh you know whether it's just a generic question

or to me it'll uh the message if it's for me

it'll

get to me so we don't have to worry about that

um but yeah that's the easiest way to connect with

us

all right well wonderful thank you so much for

joining us today i appreciate it sounds good

simon thanks for having me awesome well i'll make

sure that all the information we've spoken about

in this show is in the show notes and don't

forget to subscribe if you haven't yet thank you

so much

for listening this is true hope cast the official

podcast of true hope canada we'll see you next

week.