Male Loneliness with Mark Meier

Welcome & Acknowledgments

Stanton Shanedling: Hello, everybody! Welcome to Health Chatter, and today's episode is on loneliness. Actually, we did a show on loneliness, oh gosh, must have been about a year ago, but today's guest brings a little bit of a different twist to the whole concept, so I'm looking forward to our show today. We've got a great crew. We've got Erin Collins, Deondra Howard, Matthew Campbell, Ariana Tordor, Sheridan Nygard are all wonderful, wonderful background people that help us make these shows successful and easy for you, the listening audience, to get access to, so thanks to all of you.

Clarence Jones, my co-host on Health Chatter—it's been quite a ride, and we keep learning a lot. You know, I mean, we've been in the field a long time, but we keep learning a lot. Dr. Barry Baines, our medical advisor, always brings a medical twist to our conversations—the twist! And, you know, thank you, Barry, for being with us. It's a really nice trifecta that we have here, so welcome.

So, I'm gonna pass it on to Clarence. Clarence, you're going to introduce our illustrious guest for today's Health Chatter episode.

Clarence: I think we've had a great introduction already, pre-show. We all know Dr. Tom Kotke, who is very, very active, and he's actually the one who recommended Mr. Mark Meier, who was the Executive Director of the Face It Foundation. It's a Minnesota-based nonprofit. It's focused on peer support and connection for men, and has been around for over 15 years. And what's exciting is that Mark is building communities where men can have honest conversations about mental health, about relationships and isolation. He has taught in both the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, and has presented more than 400 presentations around the nation.

I think all of us, when we had the opportunity to know that he was coming, got excited because we're seasoned people here, and we have some friends who might be struggling with this issue of loneliness, and so we wanted to have this conversation. And so, welcome, Mark, and we are excited about having you on our show.

Defining Loneliness & Overcoming the Barriers to Asking for Help

Mark Meier: I appreciate that, and as far as the number of presentations, my kids and wife frequently say that's because I don't shut up, so you just call something a presentation, so...

Clarence: Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things for me is that I want to start off by just saying this: it is said that for 1 in 8 American men, loneliness is a barrier for their health. Can you talk a little bit about that? Can we just start off with that? I mean, with loneliness, how do you define loneliness? And then the fact is that you have a lot of men that are lonely.

Mark Meier: You know, I think what I've certainly seen over my career—and such a big part of my career and the work I do at Face It was born out of the fact that back in 2002, unbeknownst to 99.5% of the world, maybe outside of my wife, I survived a suicide attempt because I refused to ask for help. I refused to talk about what was going on, and I was a clinical social worker. I knew exactly what was going on, but all the barriers to asking for help as a man came to the forefront: I can't be weak. I can't be vulnerable. I can't possibly be needing anyone else's help, despite the fact that for 8 hours a day, I preach to people to get help, ask for help, etc.

So I think this loneliness thing, Clarence, I think so much of it is born out of the fact that we as men don't know how to access the support that's out there. We don't know how to ask for it, and we don't know what to do with it. And I think then you become isolated. Then you fill your head with stories about how the world sees you, how the world views you, how the world wants to receive you and hold you, and you go about crafting a narrative that I don't need that. So I'll build a career, or I'll struggle with addictions, or I'll build whatever that narrative might be, and guys are just left flailing.

It's getting worse now, in some ways, because guys can fill it with our phones and AI, and you have easy access to things that guys think are filling that bucket of loneliness that are really just making things worse.

Loneliness vs. Isolation & Personality Traits

Stanton Shanedling: You know, it's interesting. Yesterday, I went to my own therapist, and I said, "God, you know, Jim, we're having a guest on Health Chatter tomorrow dealing with the issue of loneliness," and he asked me to ask you if there is a distinction between loneliness and isolation, or are they really embedded conceptually?

Mark Meier: You know, at the Face It Foundation, our mission statement reads: working with men to recover from depression, leveraging peer support to prevent suicide. And I've watched my own understanding of what depression even means as it's morphed into what I see around loneliness and isolation and sort of what the differences are. I know a lot of lonely men who, to the outside world, have more friends, more family, more success, and more trappings of what is a good life, who are profoundly lonely. I think isolation applies to the guys that don't have connections, don't have people to spend time with.

What I see—and I think about this myself, and again, we're not here to diagnose depression or anything of this nature—but I think about this loneliness piece and think back to my own struggles. I'm married, I've been married for 35 years, I have an incredible wife, I have three great children, and I have a good career, but I felt so lonely because—again, this is what I come back to—I didn't know how to access people. I didn't know how to receive their kindness, their care. And again, I think some of these barriers that men have are: well, if I can't do this right, then I'm not gonna do it, and there must be something wrong with me, and I just don't want any part of this.

So, to me, loneliness can exist when you're surrounded by everything that appears good. Isolation is when we shut ourselves off, when we shut ourselves out from people. The organization I run has about 250 men who come to our groups, and we have a retreat center and things we do. 97% of them identify as introverts, and in their mind, that means I don't need people. Well, the irony is that 97% of the 250 men that come to my organization love each other, they laugh together, they talk together, and they have meals together. They told themselves a story that they don't need people because they're an introvert. And this is the problem: we just pull back from everything.

Stanton Shanedling: It's interesting you brought up the introvert-extrovert component, which is a personality type or trait. You know, I think for a lot of men, maybe it's cultural to a certain extent. I mean, after reading your article, it's cultural to a certain extent of, okay, guys, suck it up. You know, it's just like, get strong here, don't be wimpy, that type of thinking, which doesn't serve, frankly, anybody.

Triggering Events, Trauma, and Demographics

Stanton Shanedling: The other thing I was going to bring up, and then I'll bring Barry and Clarence in more, is life events. Okay, so you lose a spouse, for instance, or a significant other, or divorce, or you lose your best pal, which is a pet, okay? Do those types of things trigger, or can they trigger, this type of loneliness?

Mark Meier: I think so. I mean, whether they trigger the loneliness piece or trigger the crisis response where you finally need to pay attention to what's going on. We meet men all the time, and I'll tell you what, in 2026, it's still alive and well that so many men identify with their careers. And so, when we have guys who lose jobs, they come in under all sorts of financial duress, or it's impacting their primary relationship, or more so, it's in their mind an indication of, I'm no good, and see, I can't do this, and that's why I got fired. So these life events are profound.

We meet men who can come in diagnosed with depression, or generalized anxiety disorder, or substance use issues, whatever it may be. I tell you what, at almost 60 years old, in all the years I've been doing this, I'm starting to see that the real etiology that we've experienced and that I've seen in my career for male depression or male loneliness and isolation is a behavior choice that got made somewhere. Whether it's an affair, whether it's a job, whether it's losing a friend, whether it's that the old man finally died and I never dealt with the fact that he hit me or yelled at me... I mean, whatever it is. And again, that's a complicated conversation, and I'm not here to suggest that I know why people get the way they do, but precipitating events are things men ignore until they can't, and then they show up in one way or another.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, yeah. Barry! You know, there's gotta be... I'm sure you, in your practice, saw some of your patients that might have been experiencing this type of thing. What do you think?

Barry Baines: Yeah, no, that's true, and like I say, the older I get, I wish I knew then what I knew now to be more helpful. Because again, culturally, it's so embedded that you suck it up, you just push ahead or push it down until the stuff erupts like a volcano.

And Mark, several weeks ago, we actually had guests on our program that really talked about traumas that people have. All of us have traumas in life, and it is how you deal with it. Unfortunately, making the choice to not deal with it doesn't make it go away. It's literally like kicking the can down the road until it can't be kicked down the road anymore, and then something happens there. So I think all of these things are embedded in our society.

That being said, what I really like about the Face It organization is that we know that when you compare men to women, women always have these social networks. We could say, "Oh yeah, they chitter-chat," however you're gonna view it. Men tend—from what I've read—men tend to have fewer friends generally. It doesn't mean they don't have any, but what I call real friends, right, which are peers. Oftentimes, they're peers that you could literally say anything to, and you get a sense that sometimes you get judged to try to help you, but most of the time, it's people who will listen. And it's two-way. It's not like when you're in the therapist's office and you have a power differential.

One of the things about having fewer friends generally is that as you get older—and I'm aware of this at a personal level—a number of my really close friends have died, and that resource is taken away. Someone once said, "It doesn't mean you can't make new friends, but you can't make new old friends." And that's a big difference. So it's kind of like what you were saying with the guy where on the surface it seems like they're socially connected; yes, they are, but how much of that is at that peer level? That's what sort of grabbed me about Face It: coming in at the level of having an equal relationship with peers and having a comfort level to be able to talk about those things that are hard to talk about, and just getting that support that hopefully will start to change things.

The other piece that just struck me—and I just needed to peek at some of the suicide data—is astounding. I know you're not collecting data, but I just have an age-related question. When you look at suicide rates between men and women over 55 in general, for men, it's about five times higher than for women. Now, understandably, this is about 30 per 100,000, so it's not a massive absolute number, but for women, it's 6 per 100,000. What hit me right between the eyes is looking at it as people get older. For women, the rate stays pretty steady and then declines. For men, once they hit age 75, it goes up to about 38 per 100,000, and over 85, it's 55 per 100,000, compared to women where it's like 3 per 100,000 over 85. It's just astounding. Part of that has to do with the fact that men usually have access to firearms, which tends to be a factor we've talked about, but it seems that some of those things get worse as people get older and your network tends to pare down.

So my quick question—and sorry for taking up so much time here—is just empirically: what's the age range of people, and when do people sort of get involved with Face It? If I use 55 as the cutoff point, where do most of those come in?

Mark Meier: Yeah, oh, absolutely. We definitely skew... we have trended... so I started Face It back in 2009, so I've had an opportunity to sort of watch this. We have definitely started to trend a little bit younger, meaning guys in their mid-30s to early 40s. I would say, historically, we have absolutely been that 50-plus demographic. I have two groups of men who are primarily in their mid-70s to early 80s, and it speaks to what you mentioned, Dr. Baines—this idea that for guys, as they get older, the loneliness and the lack of coping skills in the face of how hard life is (if you live that far and watch all your friends die, and maybe your partner) leaves guys just a mess.

If I were to go through, I would say probably our average age at Face It is probably 49 and a half to 50. I think back to when we first started, we never had young guys. Never. And now, out of about 250 men, we have 25 ongoing men's groups. We don't charge; everything we do is free. 99% of my guys could pay, but you mentioned that power dynamic between a therapist and a client—that's one of the biggest reasons men don't go to therapy, because they don't like that. Ours is all peer-based.

You mentioned something else I just want to jump on real quick: this trauma piece. So many men... if I had a buck for every guy who said, "I had a normal childhood," who it turns out was either physically or sexually abused or had some sort of trauma. Guys think unless you've been in a foxhole in Afghanistan, you can't possibly have trauma. Hell, you can grow up in certain neighborhoods where you have PTSD because you witness violence and you're at risk of dying yourself. Guys just don't see it, they don't understand it, and then I think this is where we really are running into a wall. We need new ways to get to guys. They go to therapy, and our traditional medications and talk therapy are not well designed for people who have been traumatized. Guys go looking for one thing, they get a different thing, and then they say, "See, this is never gonna work," and then they quit.

Personality Styles & Cultural Backgrounds

Clarence: I have a question. I actually have two questions; I'll just do them one at a time. How does the perceived personality style affect men in terms of this task around loneliness? For example, people will say, "Well, you're an alpha guy," or "You're a beta guy." I'm a Sigma guy, so I kind of know that by myself, but does that perceived personality style also create a space for this loneliness to manifest itself?

Mark Meier: I think so. And these are some pretty wicked generalizations, but I'll make them anyway. The guys that come into Face It who have their chest popped up and their bravado—and I've worked with CEOs, with all due respect, I've worked with physicians, we've worked with all of them, it's not unique to one professional background—but I think guys who come in puffed up, needing to prove to you that really, I shouldn't even be here, those guys struggle. It takes a long time to figure that out. The guys who come in and are more open, less rigid, and don't have rigid perceptions about what it means to be a man, those tend to be the guys that I think stick. I think they tend to do better.

You know, it's interesting. We've literally had thousands of men through our door, and across a spectrum of personality types, we've had it all—from the kindest, most mild man to the guy I just want to tell to go home and never come back. The irony of it all, Clarence, is that—not that a fistfight should be the litmus test of whether we've been successful—but I've put these guys in rooms together for tens of thousands of hours, and no matter where they fall on this spectrum, they still want to take care of each other. This I have seen time and time and time again. The guy that I perceive to be the most bombastic, once he realizes he can cry, he can be hugged, and he can be told he's a good person, he softens. We're no different than women, if we're gonna break this down in a very simplistic model; we just don't have the place to do it.

Stanton Shanedling: You know, it's interesting you bring up women because that was one of the questions that I had. I am sure that they face loneliness and isolation, too.

Mark Meier: Absolutely.

Stanton Shanedling: So, the model that you have for Face It, is it appropriate or good for women as well?

Mark Meier: I tell people I sell friendship for free. You need a good friend that you can sit with. I think it goes back to—again, I realize we're speaking in some real generalizations here—but if women are more able to access their social networks, they're probably more likely to talk about the things that we talk about at Face It. It's just guys don't know how to do that as well, or it's around alcohol, or it's around... you know, there are still so many of these things that get in the way of men talking about these things.

Interestingly enough, a very dear friend of mine approached me just last year—it's a woman—and she said, "I have a group of friends, and we've all been talking..." They started under the notion of women who grew up with emotionally unavailable mothers. Well, it turns out there's a lot of those women. And she said, "I want to... can I use your space to do a group?" And I said, "Absolutely, it's all yours. Come use it every other week," whatever. And really, what she has told me is what they've found is that in this focused circle, they're doing more work, if you will, versus if they're just sitting around knitting. Again, I think it's about purpose and focus. Men don't have the natural network to do it, so we've created that. Women have it, but they still need to talk about it; you still need to do the work, if you will. So I just think women are more... they just have more people available to them.

Clarence: So, Mark, when we were presented the opportunity to meet with you, somebody framed it to me like this from a cultural perspective. They said, "Why don't you talk to him about Black men and loneliness?" So let me ask you that question so that they know that I did ask the question.

Mark Meier: You know, as far as the number of men who come to Face It, I think we're pretty representative of the mental health system: it's overwhelmingly white people who seek out our services, though certainly we have had men who come to us from various backgrounds. One of the things I have done over the years is volunteer for Anoka County Head Start, where I ran a dad's group, and that was a far more diverse group of men than what I typically deal with at Face It.

And again, I think you get into some of this cultural stuff around the risk of vulnerability. Based on where you live and who you live with, it's frickin' dangerous to be vulnerable. And so then, if we have to live in that manner you described earlier, Clarence—maybe that guy who's the alpha guy, who you know underneath is biologically and sociologically no different than anybody else; he needs love, he needs kindness, he needs to be cared for—if he can't express those things, how lonely would you feel in this world? I would assume profoundly lonely.

Loneliness as a Public Health Crisis & The Role of Modern Environments

Stanton Shanedling: You know, was it last year? I think it was last year the Surgeon General came out and listed loneliness as a major public health issue. Okay, so in your opinion, what led to the Surgeon General saying, "Hey, this is big"? Where did it come from? I don't know, isolation, I guess I would call it, from COVID, when we were all kind of hunkered down? All of a sudden, it becomes a major public health issue. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Mark Meier: You know, I don't know if his actual report was born out of COVID, though it would make sense. It's a well-written report. And one of the key takeaways—I loved this—was they equated loneliness and isolation in the United States to the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of its impact on mortality and morbidity. I'll tell you what, and I don't say this half-cocked: give me a guy with a ton of friends who smokes a pack a day over a guy who has no friends any day. I'll put my money on the smoker.

We have known this stuff for years, right? The medical model has been slow to the party when it comes to acknowledging people's social circumstances. And we know that mortality and loneliness is connected—certainly, if you live alone, your risk of suicide goes up. You guys know it's tied to heart disease, to probably cancer... I mean, it's a lot of things. I think the medical model, in my mind, part of this is that we're not really winning some of these battles when it comes to mental health and some of the treatment and what we're hoping for in terms of outcomes. I think there's just been this expanding understanding that, gosh, if people are disconnected—and we all know we are; I mean, I got a phone right here that I could spend 12 hours a day on not interacting with anybody. I tell you, I'm starting to see this at Face It already: this AI thing and people being able to connect relationships, oh my god, it's unbelievable where that goes. Who knows?

Stanton Shanedling: So let me ask you, is the Face It model similar to, like, Alcoholics Anonymous?

Mark Meier: It was so funny, I was just having this conversation yesterday. Face It is kind of like that. We don't have any steps, and we're not a religious organization. You know, I've gone out of my way not to overtrain my facilitators. All the 40 men who run my groups are simply guys that have been through the doors, and I support them. We meet every quarter to talk about what's going on, and I try to vet them. The more you professionalize something—and this is a real belief of mine—the less likely a guy is to access it. And I think that that is really the challenge.

It's interesting because how I met Dr. Kotke is he and another physician, Dr. Palmer, a psychiatrist, we started talking about Face It. They came out to Face It, and we were trying to figure out how we could incorporate Face It into their system. My medical board includes doctors from the U, from Mayo, and from the University of Michigan. I mean, I've met a lot of physicians, and we talk about this. They'll say to me, "Okay, so let me get this straight. You want to put a bunch of guys in a room, many of whom have suicide attempts and many are recently out of the hospital, you want to talk about all these difficult things, and you want a plumber and an accountant to lead the group?" Like, you can't do it in their professional setting. And so, I've really tried to just keep this as friendship—friendship for free. And something's working, because I got 250 guys who show up for their groups on a regular and consistent basis.

The True Cost of Admitting Loneliness

Clarence: I want to ask this question real quick. What's the cost of identifying yourself as lonely?

Mark Meier: What is the what?

Clarence: The cost.

Mark Meier: The cost. I think the first thing is you gotta look in the mirror. What's the name of my organization? It's called Face It. I named it for a reason, because when I looked in the mirror and didn't like what I saw, then things really went sideways. I think the cost is profound. I think it's an acknowledgement that, first of all, you're probably not what you perceived yourself to be. You may have to take a hard look at why aren't I connected? Why am I acting the way I am?

I think the cost, in some ways, is that rock-bottom analogy of a substance use issue, because if I'm lonely, what is at the root of that? Why? Why? And again, guys love to turn up the volume on distractions as soon as they start having to ask and answer these very hard questions.

Clarence: Thank you.

Stanton Shanedling: Well, there's another aspect, I think, to this. It's one thing what people are experiencing that they might have some control over, okay? But then think about all the things that are going on in our environment—politically, gun violence, cost of living, all these things. It can, I think, exacerbate that. So talk to me about those two arenas and how they interplay, I guess.

Mark Meier: I think about my own experience. I have 3 kids: a 29-year-old, a 27-year-old, and a 25-year-old, and I fundamentally believe their life today is incredibly more difficult than my life was when I was those ages because of a lot of external circumstances. And I think we've all become, unfortunately, so desensitized, and I think we're walking around in some state of trauma the better part of each and every day. A horrible tragedy happens, and 12 minutes later, it's usurped by yet another horrible tragedy.

So I think for so many people, we think we're doing fine, and yet all these things are impacting us, and it's hard to even know any better if this is all you've grown up with. I always think about my 24-year-old daughter; we talked about high school—she went to Minneapolis South High School, all my kids went there—and I asked her, "What was your most challenging part about high school?" And she said, "Practicing active shooter drills." I never had to do that. That's traumatizing.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, the only thing we dealt with were tornado alerts.

Mark Meier: Exactly, and those little desks were somehow gonna save us.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, right.

Mark Meier: So, I think the environment is fundamentally changing the way we interact with society and with people. The beauty of what I've seen with Face It, and with anybody who has a robust support network, is that at least then you have a place to talk about all the pain.

Clarence: Yeah.

Human Interaction vs. Digital Connection

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, so let me give you a personal experience. My kids and grandkids live on the East Coast, okay, in Boston, in Bethesda, whatever. And I'll be honest with you, I feel, personally, I feel isolated. Yes, I can contact them either by phone or FaceTime, but the human interaction—in this case, the family interaction—is compromised, in my mind, okay? So, do you deal with that at all at Face It?

Mark Meier: I deal with it, certainly personally, and certainly guys deal with it at Face It. Again, I'm no sociology or history expert by any means; I can just tell you what I see and what guys talk about. What I see is we all have this desire to be with the people we love, and this is not new. People have been scattering from their biological nuclear home for the last 70 years. But I do think that for so many guys... I have so many men who have so much regret from when their kids were little because they were so distracted, they were so busy building careers, or whatever it was. And so then, when the opportunity comes where the guy gets himself right in the world, or however we want to phrase that, the kids are gone! The relationships are gone, they've moved.

Probably... oh, gosh, again, this is where Tom and I used to battle, because he'd say, "What percent of this?" And I'm like, "Tom, I'm sorry, I know guys' names and cell numbers, that's about all we collect." We have so many men who have become divorced or have difficult relationships, not because either person is bad, but because they don't talk to each other and they don't solve things. They just... they're so lonely, they just shut down. So, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but yeah, a lot of it.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, no.

Integrating Peer Support with Professional Care

Barry Baines: I wanna... yeah, I wanna...

Stanton Shanedling: Did you have patients at all, Barry, that you dealt with loneliness with?

Barry Baines: Not that I would necessarily... back then, we didn't define it in that way. Sometimes it was manifested as either depression or substance abuse; those are the two things, 100%. You know, it was almost easier to talk about—and it was usually alcohol—it was easier to talk about that than to talk about depression because of the whole stigma about mental health issues just in general. I think we're sort of coming out of the dark ages on that, but there's still a long way to go. So, the answer is I probably did, and that's why I prefaced before that if I knew then what I know now, I would probably have been a more effective family physician doing that.

Okay, so I answered that question, but I had two other questions. One of them, I wanted to go a little bit deeper on the question that one of Clarence's friends made him ask on the show today, so that he knows about that. It makes me wonder within the African American community, for example... one of the things about the Face It organization is that you do away with the power things, which for people of color could be accentuated, potentially from a racial perspective. But also the fact that it's free removes a financial barrier, which could also make it more accessible.

And so one of my questions is actually, Mark, to you and to Clarence as well: do you think that because you started this off as a pilot—it's still sort of like a big pilot in a way—what would the reception potentially be in the African American community to starting a group or exploring that to see how that might be accepted? So I was curious about that, depending on...

Clarence: Yeah, what was interesting to me, Mark and Barry, is the fact that I just met a guy who wrote a book called The Black Parachute, and it's a 365-day journal asking men questions and having them write down how they felt about different things. And what I thought about—and I've already sent your paper to them—was that this seems to be a wonderful way to help address some of the mental health issues that a lot of men are facing from a variety of different socioeconomic statuses, okay?

So the fact that it's free... even though I think that we would find many of those men would be very much peers, as you found in your group—professionals and people who are highly active, but they're lonely. And so, for me, when I'm looking at this particular conversation, I'm thinking about how do I make my community healthier? It doesn't matter what our group is called; we are called human. Every man has... all of us are human, okay, so we just got that. But the question, I think Barry is correct, is that people want to talk, but they want to talk in a safe environment. I think that part of what you're doing right now is helping—you're self-identifying the strategy, the purpose, and the culture of Face It, and that would make people more interested in being involved. So that's what I want to say. I got an agenda, let me put it out there. I'm like, okay, let me see what's happening here. Okay, so anyway, Barry, I don't know if I answered your question, but that's my hidden agenda today, so you know.

Barry Baines: Yeah, I didn't think we were going to have solutions or answers to questions as much as talking with each other about this, furthering the conversation, and ultimately potentially getting to some action. So, the answer is yes, that's why I wanted to bring you into that conversation as well.

And then I did have just... this was like a side thing, because it came out of the paper that you and Tom and your other co-authors contributed to, and that is the professional world. It sounds like there's certainly a group of people who are like horrified by untrained people—it's not that they're untrained, but they're not professionally trained from a mental health perspective or what have you. I kind of understand the professional situation of maybe being against something like that, but when you look at the core of what Face It is doing, I really hope it's an extremely small minority because we don't have the resources. Even if we wanted to help people at a professional level, we're nowhere close to the resources for helping people.

The professional side of it tends to be more of that pathology orientation and disease orientation, which is very different from prevention, quality of life, and getting people to be more functional without being pathologically ill with something that just about all of us experience in life. It's about building that resilience, because we did have a show on resilience that talked about trauma, and that keeps coming back to me as well. In a way, Face It is helping to build a core of resilience in the community of people that participate. So, I was just wondering a little bit about where does this resistance come from in the professional community about that, if you know much more about that?

Mark Meier: I think that that has gotten so much better. That piece of that conversation that Tom and I had, I would say, harkens back more to when we first got going and when we really started. We get referrals now from all the inpatient psych programs—Regions, Hennepin, the VA, you name it, the U—all the IOPs, you know, all the intensive outpatient and partial hospital programs. We get referrals all the time now, and so I think that resistance has lessened.

I think part of that was some of my own biases when I first really started Face It. I came into this with two unique experiences: my clinical background and my personal background. My personal background was suicide, hospitalization, commitment, and all those things, and my professional background was this clinical thing. And what I've learned over the years is it's not that we can't collaborate, but we're different. We're trying to accomplish different things. And so, really, I think what I've come to see—and probably don't feel as... maybe I felt inadequate as a professional trying to just help guys as friends—I've just really learned a lot of lessons myself over the years.

I think, Barry, what I see now is that professionals understand what we're doing is just trying to build social networks for people. And you know, one of the coolest things we've done at Face It is we put together a peer support trauma therapy program. I worked exclusively with a group of therapists who were all very skilled in trauma-based therapies like EMDR and accelerated resolution therapy—these really trauma-focused interventions. And while these men were under that care, we also put them in a peer group together. So over the course of 6 weeks, while they were getting this pretty heavy-duty, intensive therapy, they were with each other talking—talking about their experiences, talking about why this wasn't working for them, talking about how this felt. Again, it just goes back to... we've had cancer navigators, we know we need to pair people with peer support as they're accessing professional help because it just makes it more effective.

Grassroots Solutions & Expanding the Model

Mark Meier: If I can go back real quick to just a couple of things that Clarence was saying about the communities: in that article that Tom and I wrote, the last paragraph before he gets to the conclusion, he talks about how without Face It, essentially Minneapolis-St. Paul would have probably experienced 35 to 40 more suicides because these guys wouldn't have had their peer group. You go to any given Face It group, and I can tell you right now—I can't prove it, I don't have the data—but I would argue of the 250 men who walk through my door today, there'd be at least 200 who'd say, "I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for these guys sitting in my group."

We have solutions. I was just on a phone call, a Zoom call—the Minnesota Department of Health is looking at its suicide prevention plan statewide in the state of Minnesota. They hosted three different webinars for how to get to men, how to get to men. So I participated in one of them, and for the third one, I put it out to all my guys; I got a 500-person email list. There were 8 Face It guys on that Minnesota Department of Health call saying, "Why isn't there more grassroots peer support available?" I mean, we have solutions.

The Masons... are you guys familiar with the Masons? I'm not a Mason, but I've learned about them. Face It has entered into a joint collaboration with the Masons of Minnesota to bring our model to all 135 Mason lodges because their guys are alcoholics, their guys are lonely, and their guys are killing themselves. Like, what are we waiting for?

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, you know, to me, part of the equation... well, there's two sides. One is awareness. You know, it's like you first have to face it, or be aware of the fact that you are lonely, and then kind of going up and over the hurdle of I need some help here. Okay, so that's part of the way I perceive facing it. And then, once—and correct me if I'm wrong—once you're in a group or engaged with Face It, you realize that, geez, misery loves company. You know, it's just like, okay, we can all talk through this and hold hands and help one another here a little bit. Does that ring true?

Mark Meier: 100%. And the irony is, so just this past Monday, we hosted our facilitators to do what we do every quarter, and one facilitator said, "You know what the biggest problem is in my group right now? Everybody's doing so well." And I thought about who's in that group. There are 4 guys that tried to commit suicide. There are 3 guys who were actively abusing substances when they showed up. So what happens now at Face It is I can't bring new people in because all these guys are doing so well and are such good friends that... misery loves company, but so does joy. And once they realize that, they don't want to let go.

Stanton Shanedling: And it's understandable. It's totally understandable. You know, a couple weeks ago, we had a psychotherapist, Tom Glaser—I don't know if you know Tom Glaser, but he wrote a book, and we talked about his book, where he went through a lot of misery, loneliness, bullying, etc. And now he's a psychotherapist and wrote a really, really good book that kind of connects with our show here today: The House That Resilience Built. And here it is that he had to be resilient himself, much like you, Mark, when you had to face your issues, and then how it is that he got up and over the hurdle to truly apply what he was dealing with by helping others. Same conceptual idea: the house that resilience built. Very, very good book.

Alright, Clarence, what do you think? Last comments here. I mean, this has been really, really good. You've got a great thing going here, Mark. Thank you. Go ahead, Clarence.

Closing Remarks & Upcoming Shows

Clarence: Yeah, yeah. So, as I just said a little bit earlier, I am going to be contacting you because I want to make a connection and bring some other people into this conversation. And so, thank you very much for your willingness to be vulnerable and open. I like the fact of how you self-identified so much stuff before we had to ask you; that makes a big difference for me in terms of understanding your passion and your authenticity. Thank you.

Mark Meier: You're welcome. I'm a mess, Clarence, I'll just put that out there, right? No, I appreciate that, and I think that... I mentioned to you guys earlier that I was an administrator of a dialysis clinic, and I still don't quite know how I got there, but when I got there, the first thing I wanted to do was be trained as a patient care technician. I wanted to understand what it meant to put a needle in somebody's arm, to hook them up to dialysis, to see their eyes when they were doing this. And I can't ask guys to be something that I'm not willing to be. And you know, being vulnerable and being honest about what I've been through probably is what really saved my life, because I took the shame and all the steam away from what happened. Because now I'm just another guy that things went south for a while.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, well, there's a difference between sympathy and empathy, for sure. Barry, thoughts?

Barry Baines: I'm gonna be concise here. I think all of us are messes anyway, I mean, to be truthful among my friends here. But being a mess doesn't mean you can't be an effective and loving and caring human being. And even more importantly for me is... I think the group that's like doing too well, they talked about... I think this also offers an opportunity. One of the things that helps people through loneliness, I think, is when they find meaning in what they do. And I think, actually, the Face It organization, because it's peer-based, can also offer an opportunity for providing meaningful activities for people.

All of us, at our core, want to make the world a better place, we want to improve our communities, and with the peer model, you can actually potentially do that. And so, I'm going to be very interested in hearing how the connection between Mark, you, and Clarence goes, and to see what happens with this. But also, thank you so much for bringing this concept and this organization forward. I really enjoyed the conversation, and it was good to meet you in person as well. Thank you.

Stanton Shanedling: You know, to a certain extent, there's sadness to this—sadness and happiness. There's sadness in the sense that so many people are facing this issue, but the happiness is that we have some routes that they can go to, to feel better. Just feel better. Through human interaction and the whole nine yards, I think it's actually wonderful.

And maybe, to a certain extent in this day and age, and why it's a major public health issue or whatever, is we have a lot on our plates these days. We really, really do. And if we can be grateful and help one another a little bit, I think that's the key. I really do.

Mark Meier: Yep.

Stanton Shanedling: So, thank you, thank you so much for this. You know, it's interesting, we're dealing with a lot of L's: so we're dealing with loneliness, and then Barry and Clarence and I are going to be doing a show on longevity, another L, you know, and it's interesting, longevity now is also becoming kind of a thing to address.

So thank you so much, Mark, for being on our show. For the listening audience, we've got longevity coming up, and we're also going to be dealing with the issue of disabilities. You know, there are always people that are dealing with disabilities, but are they having to deal with it differently today? And so we'll be having a show coming up on that.

So for all of you out there in the listening audience, remember that Hueman Partnership is our sponsor—HuemanPartnershipAlliance.org. You can check us out at healthchatterpodcast.com for all the shows and the background research to our shows, so visit them when you can. So, for all of you out there, keep health chatting away.