What Big Boys does so truthfully in that moment and across the three seasons is show depression and mental health challenges don’t look or present in a specific way, and there isn’t one answer to the problem. Depression or any mental health problems can look very differently on the outside than they do on the inside and present differently in everyone. You can be the lad about town with the tough facade and still struggle. You can be exploring your sexuality at university and still struggling to navigate grief.
There can be multiple reasons why someone suffers from their mental health and the answer isn’t just to tell people to start talking. We talk a lot about ‘talking’ and how important it is to ‘talk,’ but that only goes so far when we haven’t been taught how to share and how to listen when someone opens up to us about their mental health.
As Big Boys shows, mental illness can happen to anyone at any time and the ability to get help is a class-based and a gendered issue, too. Not everyone has the means or the ability to find a therapist, or even have an understanding support network to turn to.
We are so used to hearing celebrities or people with great privilege being given a platform to talk about their mental health – which is incredible and has helped in reducing stigma, especially amongst women – but people from different backgrounds or classes aren’t given the same platform. We have to dig a little bit deeper to find their stories and to get them the help they need. Where is their representation, their guidance to navigate their struggles and get help?
Patch Dolan/Channel 4
The reality is, and as Big Boys brutally suggests, yes, we have more buzzwords or terms to talk about or put a sticking plaster over mental health, but where is the tangible change, and how can we really help? It says, and rightly so, that talking can start a path to recovery, but it doesn’t always solve a problem and can’t solve the problem alone. We need seismic social change and better social health institutions and as individuals, we need to put aside our biases and not expect mental health to manifest or appear in a certain way, especially when it comes to men’s mental health, if we are ever going to truly address this issue.
Big Boys gives us the platform and the reference point to get talking but actually doing something about it starts with us. It starts with us showing up, learning how to talk to someone about their mental well being and helping someone get the right support and backing them along that journey. So let’s do it for ourselves, our loved ones and do it for all the Dannys out there.
Big Boys is available on Channel 4 On Demand now.
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