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How Canadians are pushing the conversation around men's health forward

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HOW CANADIANS ARE PUSHING
THE CONVERSATION AROUND MEN’S HEALTH FORWARD

By

Nicholas Sahak Yekikian
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ART
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

December 2019

Copyright 2019 Nicholas S. Yekikian
ii
Dedication
The Spencer Mills and the men like him who suffer in silence without ever saying a word.

iii
Table of Contents
Dedication ii

Introduction 1
How It Starts 4
No Man Is An Island 7
The Power of Loss 14
Bibliography 20

1
Introduction
In the late 1980s, Vancouver, Canada, was neatly divided into east and west parts of the city by
Main Street. West Vancouver was, and still is, one of the most affluent areas in all of Canada,
while “East Van,” as it was locally known, was home to Vancouver’s working class – a mix of
middle-class whites and immigrants. Spencer Mills grew up in a lower middle class
neighborhood in East Van. He would frequently visit a place called “the intersection on Main
Street,” a set of housing projects in East Van that was defined by its close proximity to a nicer
part of Vancouver.
1

At the time, Vancouver was home to some 431,000 residents, and Main Street was the interface
between what Karl Marx would call the haves and have-nots of the city.
2
The street itself was a
mess of Chinese restaurants, graffiti-laden alleyways, bars and record shops that would come to
define Spencer Mills’ childhood. Trevor Mills, his younger brother, says he remembers regularly
having to dodge bullies on his way home from school and devouring mixtapes with Spencer.
3

Spencer and Trevor were the first and third children, respectively, of a family with four kids.

The culture of East Vancouver, legal or otherwise, would heavily inform the Mills brothers’
interests as they grew. It became apparent very early on that graffiti – or “street art,” as it has
been more affectionately called – struck a chord with Spencer. He grew up with it
and would continue to tag until he was nearly 30 – sometimes doing so in broad daylight, just for
the extra thrill. Trevor, on the other hand, was taken by the music that came out of East Van. No
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1
Trevor Mills, Personal interview, June 6, 2019.
2
StatCan, Census of Canada Municipal Census Populations (1921-2011), Table 18, www.Statcan.com accessed May
16, 2019, http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Census/MunicipalPopulations.
3
Trevor Mills, Personal interview.
2
one group in particular left a significant impression on him. He simply grew into a love for hip-
hop, and he has been writing lyrics, making music and rapping since he was 7 years old. And to
this day, if you put a mic in front of him, Trevor will break into freestyle rap without hesitation.

As the Mills brothers grew up, they also grew apart. Their parents divorced when Trevor was 10
and Spencer 12. Trevor moved in with his father and older sister, Jessica, while Spencer stayed
with his mother and the family’s younger daughter, Laura. While Trevor dedicated himself to his
music and becoming a teacher, Spencer joined a gang. Spencer also started dealing drugs, selling
guns and taking part in other gang-related activities as a way to earn the acceptance and
protection of his peers – and to make enough money to provide for his mother and younger
sister.

Spencer eventually developed a drug addiction while trying to make enough money to keep the
lights on for his mother. By the age of 33, Spencer had been fighting depression and anxiety for
10 years – all brought on by the pressures that were constantly pushing him toward crime. After
more than 15 years of dealing drugs, graffiti, selling guns, depression and anxiety, Spencer Mills
shot and killed himself on July 4, 2013, on Main Street in Vancouver.
4

But Spencer’s suicide is not unique or even rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control,
47,173 Americans committed suicide in 2017, and 78 percent of them were committed by men.
5

Suicide is the current leading cause of death for men between the ages of 15-39 in Canada, and

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4
Trevor Mills. Personal interview, June 16, 2019.
5
U.S. Centers for Disease Control. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 68, No. 9 June 24, 2019. 2019.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf
3
men make up 75 percent of all suicide deaths in Canada. “Eight men die by suicide in Canada
every single day,” says Craig Martin, global director of Mental Health & Suicide Prevention for
the Movember Foundation, a charity raising funds and awareness about men’s health.
6
Men also
go to the doctor far less frequently than women, often leaving serious health concerns
undiagnosed because they have been told by society that it is not “manly” to seek out help.
Trevor said Spencer regularly refused to seek help, and that this mentality is partially responsible
for his psychotic break and part of what eventually led to his death.

Trevor says that he thinks a lot of his brother’s anxieties were a direct result of some of
problems that come about as a result of masculine norms. They apply to every man, and they
have been the same for generations.

Spencer and the many other men like him are why a group of doctors, activists and gender
studies professors in Canada are all working to help fight the stigma around seeking help and
change the way men think about being a man. They are working to reach them with new
techniques and simple changes they hope will add years onto men’s lives, all while fighting the
stigma men often feel when it comes to their mental health. They are doing this for men like
Spencer Mills – men who do not seek the help they need, men who are too worried about being
strong and men who suffer in silence, men who really need to hear these things the most.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
6
Richard, Joanne. "Male Suicide: Many Suffer in Silence." Toronto Sun. September 14, 2017. Accessed August 03,
2019. https://torontosun.com/2017/09/14/male-suicide-many-suffer-in-silence/wcm/b67096e5-e0b7-4e28-af0c-
42e8e4 68990
4
Spencer Mills died because of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but what drove him to that
moment was more than 20 years of built up stress, anxiety and unmet societal expectations that
Trevor says ultimately killed him.

How It Starts
Even though Trevor and Spencer were close, after their parents divorced, their lives moved in
different directions. Trevor said that Spencer, staying with their mother, felt the burden of being
“the man of the house,” and he developed bad habits to try to fill that role.

“The stereotype is that the male is to have money, have a car, not ask for help, be in control of
where they are and have a plan for where they're going to go next,” Trevor said. “Spencer found
himself with a group of friends who are very materialistic about their clothes. He saw the
pressure to present himself in designer clothes, have a nice car or own property, and the pursuit
of that, I felt really, really wore him down.”

In 2008, sociologist and gender studies professor Michael Kimmel published a book on the way
boys come to define masculinity. In “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,”
a book for which he says he interviewed hundreds of men between the ages of 16 and 26,
Kimmel tries to establish the defining principles of that tenuous “bro code” into a set of
mantras.
7

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
7
Kimmel, Michael. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: 2008, HarperCollins), 44.
5
“In countless workshops on college campuses and in high school assemblies, I’ve asked young
men what it means to be a man,” Kimmel wrote. “… The responses are rather predictable. The
first thing someone usually says is, ‘Don’t cry,’ then other similar phrases and ideas—never
show your feelings, never ask for directions, never give up, never give in, be strong, be
aggressive … get laid, win—follow easily after that.”
8

Kimmel is not the first person to have observed that men act according to a certain set of guiding
principles. In 1976, social psychologists Deborah David and Robert Brannon published “The
Forty-Nine Percent Majority: The Male Sex Role,” where Brannon and David define the four
basic rules.

They are as follows:
•“No sissy stuff!” Being a man means not being a sissy, not being perceived as weak, effeminate,
or gay.
•“Be a big wheel.” The centrality of success in the definition of masculinity.

•“Be a sturdy oak.” What makes a man is that he is reliable in a crisis.
•“Give ‘em hell.” Exude an aura of daring an aggression. Live life out on the edge. Take risks.
9

Kimmel also pointed out that, to his amazement, those four basic rules have changed very little
over successive generations of men. Dr. Michael Kehler, a professor of masculinity studies and
education at the University of Calgary in Canada, said that these norms have been the same for a
very long time, and that, these ideas are how each and every male constructs what it means to be
a guy, and it starts when they are in high school and is only reinforced over time.
10
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
8
Kimmel, Michael. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: 2008, HarperCollins), 44.
9
Ibid, 45.
10
Michael Kehler. Personal interview, January 2, 2019.

6
“There's different layers and different levels to boys and men and to suggest that we are all one
way … and it’s inadequate,” Kehler said. “We are well aware of what the expectations about
how we should conduct ourselves or what other men expect of us, but that’s very socially
determinist.”

Spencer Mills was no exception to those few guiding principles: He felt he had to portray
strength, he wasn’t afraid of violence and he wanted to be the “breadwinner” in his mother’s
household. After all, it was expected of a man in Spencer’s position. Trevor believes that a
number of those expectations likely played a fatal part in Spencer’s life.

“He compromised his mental health to an extreme degree to try to make those ends meet,”
Trevor said of his brother. “He felt that asking for help was a sign of weakness. And I feel like
by holding his cards so close to his chest, he wasn't able to ask for help when he really needed it.
I do feel like in general with men a reason why so many of us take our lives is that it's too
dangerous to look weak … It’s almost like he felt there was no coming back from asking for
help.”

The American Psychological Association’s “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys
and Men”
11
states, “Although boys and men, as a group, tend to hold privilege and power based
on gender, they also demonstrate disproportionate rates of receiving harsh discipline (e.g.,
suspension and expulsion), academic challenges (e.g., dropping out of high school), mental
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
11
Amerian Psychological Association, “APA GUIDELINES for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.”
www.apa.com. August 2018. Accessed May 2, 2019. https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-
guidelines.pdf

7
health issues, physical health problems (e.g., cardiovascular problems) public health concerns
(e.g., violence, substance abuse, incarceration, and early mortality), and a wide variety of other
quality-of-life issues.”

Men are also more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than women. According to the U.S. Centers

for Disease Control, approximately 23 percent of adult men report binge drinking five times a

month (with about eight drinks per binge on average).
12
The CDC also reports that, “Men are
more likely than women to commit suicide, and more likely to have been drinking prior to
committing suicide.”
12
And though anxiety and depression are more prevalent in women, they
are both frequently under reported and often go untreated in men because, as the American
Psychological Association says, “many men report distinctive barriers to receiving gender-
sensitive psychological treatment.”
13, 14

Those barriers to psychological treatment are now ingrained in the way men think about their
emotional and mental health, but a group of researchers, gender studies professors, and men’s
health advocates in Canada have decided it is high time to put the conversation around men’s
health into overdrive.

No Man Is An Island
Next Gen Men is a non-profit organization that employs just five people, but though the group is
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12
Centers for Disease Control. “Fact Sheets - Excessive Alcohol Use and Risks to Men's Health.” www.cdc.gov.
March 7, 2016. Accessed May 2, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/mens-health.htm.
13
American Psychological Association. “Summit on Women and Depression.” www.apa.com. April 2002. Accessed
May 19, 2019. https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/depression/summit-2002.pdf.
14
American Psychological Association. “Men and Depression. By the numbers.” www.apa.com. December 2015.
Accessed May 19, 2019. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/12/numbers.

8
small, the work they do is far-reaching. The group was started with the goal of promoting
positive masculinities, healthier practices and gender equity across schools, communities and
workplaces in Canada. They host events and talks to try and extend conversations like the ones
Kehler is having to everyone from groups of young men to large companies.
15

“[The community work] is very grassroots,” said Jake Stika, the executive director of Next Gen
Men. “We throw together an event, choose a theme and ask a couple people to share a story.
What we’re really trying to do there is try and get outside of the classic conversations of sports,
politics and the stock ticker and get into things that impact us on a regular basis around what it
means to ‘be a man.’”

Stika stands 6 foot 8 and his athletic build and doesn’t exactly say executive director of an
organization working to rethink the way society sees men and masculinities, but his soft voice
tells a story to the contrary. Stika’s family immigrated to Canada to flee communism in
Czechoslovakia in the mid 1980s. He took ESL classes until he was 10 and says he learned early
on what it meant to be different. He quickly became an athlete to try and fit in, and his height
helped him stand out as a basketball player. Stika played basketball for Niagara College in
Ontario, and eventually played semi-professionally in Germany and the Czech Republic.
16

“However, when I was 22 I had a pretty severe mental health breakdown and a pretty bad bout of
depression” Stika said. He ascribes his depression to external pressures he was facing at the time,

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
15
Jake Stika. Personal interview, May 1, 2019.
16
Jake Stika. Email correspondence. May 9, 2019.
9
many of which stemmed from being a man and the certain set of expectations that come with it.
“A lot of it was stigma I was placing on myself. Conversations like, ‘What the hell is wrong with
you? You’re weak. You’re soft.’ … Just so much shame.”

He called it, “being smacked by the status quo,” and as a result he started Next Gen Men in 2014.
Since then his mission has been simple: “to make the invisible visible” by talking with men of all
ages about men’s health and gender equity through his non-profit. Next Gen Men was
incorporated in Toronto in 2015, and its first initiative was a youth program. Members of Next
Gen Men visit schools and host events with students interested in men’s health to talk about
things like gender equality, depression and gender norms, among other things.

Since its start, the program has reached more than 2,000 young people in the greater Toronto
area and plans to expand to other provinces in Canada in the near future.
17
Next Gen Men’s
community groups were begun in 2016 as a monthly meeting where men can talk about their
emotions, the pressures they are feeling in everyday life and anything that goes beyond the basic
conversations of sports and politics. It’s a way for men to reach out to other men who are feeling
the same way as they are. It’s something Trevor says Spencer never felt like he was able to do.

Next Gen Men has done gender equality and mental health work in a number of different
provinces and in the United States, and while occasionally Stika has to deal with pushback from
men he speaks with, he says the hardest part of the job is getting men to think about their health
in the first place.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
17
Jake Stika. Personal interview. May 1, 2019.
10
“There’s a lot of fear of change, of innovation, and transition and those kinds of things,” he said.
“I think those of us who have traditionally benefited from the status quo are scared of what that
change means for us moving forward. With feminism over the last 70 years we’ve had a brilliant
conversation about women’s identities and goals in society, but we haven’t had a parallel
conversation for men. Now I think we’re now starting to have that conversation.

“My goal is to role model new ways of 'being a man.’ We've all been steeped in the restrictive
ways of 'being a man' from family, media, culture. You always hear, ‘You can't care about this
person this way. You can't show this emotion. You can't do those jobs.’ Being told you can't do
something constantly feels like the walls are closing in. By transforming the conversation from
should to could, we create all new possibilities and break out of the man box. You could care
about this person, you could show this emotion, you could work this job - you can be anything
you want and still 'be a man'. That feels nice.”

I asked Stika what he would have said to someone like Spencer Mills, someone who was
suffering in silence right now and felt like there was no way out. “No man is an island,” he
replied. “We all go through shit, we all wish things were different, and we're all scared to be
ourselves. Chances are that if you open up to someone you care about who probably cares about
you, they'll say, 'Yeah man, me too'. ... From there you will have better relationships with others
because you yourself will be OK.”

Stika says the status quo – that is, men suffering from things like depression in silence and
perpetuating the patriarchy at the same time – will not change until men do, and teaching men
about the need for those changes is what Next Gen Men will continue to do. Stika also said that,
11
on occasion, he gets pushback for the work he’s trying to do, and it’s not just Next Gen Men that
has faced resistance in the past.

In 2012 Simon Fraser University sought to open a men’s center – a safe space for male students.
The initiative was opposed by some who argued that establishing a men’s center, “may give the
impression of creating a ‘formal equality’ without taking needed steps towards ‘substantive
equality.’”
18

Dr. John Oliffe, a men’s health researcher at the University of British Columbia, sees it the other
way around. Oliffe is the founder of the men’s health research program at the University of
British Columbia and has studied men’s health for 15 years. He says that, even though the
program at UBC focuses on men, their work affects everyone.
19

“I’m very sure that if we make an impact on men, in terms of their health, there’s significant
benefits for everybody,” Oliffe said. “When people trope out this stuff about, ‘If you’re doing
men’s health you’re not doing family health or women’s health,’ I think the opposite is actually
true … because when we make a difference to a bloke, we make a difference to everyone around
him. As idealistic as that is, that’s actually just the nature of our business.”

Oliffe’s business is running the men’s health research program at UBC. The men’s health
program there researches prostate cancer, psycho-social care, depression in men and suicidality

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
18
Murphy, Megan. “Does Simon Fraser University Need a Men’s Center?” The Tyee. May 3, 2012. Accessed
March 19, 2019. https://thetyee.ca/News/2012/05/03/SFU-Mens-Centre/.
19
John Oliffe. Personal interview, May 29, 2019.
12
in men. Oliffe says they help guide men to be the best they can be and offer strength-based
approaches to what it is men can change in order to live better, healthier, more productive lives,
whether that’s smoking less, being more physically active or more emotionally open.

An offshoot of that effort is to work with and guide other non-profits working in the space of
men’s health. The Canadian Men’s Health Foundation, a non-profit organization that was

founded with the sole purpose of bettering men’s lives from the standpoint of health awareness,
recently worked with Oliffe and others to conduct a health literacy survey across Canada. More
than 5,000 men signed up as willing participants, from there the answers of 2,000 were selected
for analysis. They wanted to see just how much, or how little, men from various backgrounds
knew about healthcare and if they were actively engaged in their own health.
20

The study found that men around Spencers’ age – men between the ages of 21-30 – knew the
least about healthcare in general, and were the least engaged with any kind of health care
professional. The study also stated that there are “behavioral and structural challenges for
advancing young men’s active engagement with health care professionals.”
21
This kind of
awareness is what the CMHF is trying to build in men of all ages. The group introduced an
online tool called YouCheck where men can go and take an online survey to get a comprehensive
health risk assessment without having to see a doctor. The survey takes around ten minutes to
complete, asks for no personal information and checks for mental and physical well being.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20
John Oliffe et al. “Canadian Men’s Health Literacy: A Nationally Representative Survey.” Society For Public
Health Education (2019). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839919837625.
21
Ibid, 5.
13
“Youcheck.ca. is the first of its kind in the world actually, specifically geared at men,” said Joe
Rachert, the Program Manager at the CMHF. “We've had probably almost a hundred thousand
guys go through youcheck in Canada. It’s an awareness building tool and that’s strictly what it's
there for.”

I asked if I could speak to some of the men who’ve used the tool, but he said he couldn’t make
that happen. Why? Because an important part of getting past the stigma of men’s health is to
keep it 100 percent anonymous. Rachert says it’s part of the reason so many men have used it.

“Men don't access the healthcare system. There's all these things that are based on stigma and
cultural norms, societal norms, that make men having access and participating in the healthcare
system a challenge for them. That's one of the reasons why (it’s anonymous),” Rachert said.
22

The CMHF recently conducted another study, this time surveying the men who have already
accessed YouCheck and their other resources. The study isn’t published yet, but Rachert said
they discovered that the men who have accessed their information are often more aware of their

health, feel less stigmatized and engage in healthier behaviors as a result of what they learned
form the CMHF.
23

The endgame – for Next Gen Men, Heads Up Guys and the Candian Men’s Health Foundation –
is to find a way to get rid of the stigma around talking about depression, anxiety and other health
problems men face; to allow men to be sensitive and open, rather than insist that they be closed

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
22
Joe Rachert. Personal interview, May 31, 2019.
23
Joe Rachert. Personal interview, May 31, 2019.
14
off for the sake of “strength.” All of these programs and studies have the same goal in mind: to
help build better, more health-conscious men, so that each can help build a better future for
themselves and their loved ones.

The Power of Loss
“I was woken up by three phone calls in a row,” Trever Mills recalled. “The third one (was) from
my dad at one in the morning. I woke up, and he said - ‘I have some sad news’ - and I cut him
off and I said, ‘Is Spencer dead?’ and he said that he’d been shot.”

Trevor took a cab to the hospital where Spencer was being treated, but by the time Trevor
arrived, Spencer was on life support. “We didn’t see him that night. The next day we went in and
saw him on life support and when we went over and saw his body, we all said goodbye.”

Since Spencer’s death in 2013, Trevor has been working on building that better future, both for
himself and the people he reaches with his music. Rap and hip-hop was a huge part of Trevor’s
upbringing, because Trevor had trouble hearing anything else, literally. When Trevor was five he
was diagnosed with a hearing impairment that meant he had a difficult time remembering
information he heard. Verbal instructions and lessons in school never stuck, but music did.

When Trevor was seven, his father gave him a mixtape by the American rap group The Fat Boys
and he memorized the entire tape – memorizing an entire album word for word is still no
problem for Trevor. “I can’t even keep track of how many songs I know by heart,” Trevor said.

15
Though Trevor still has some trouble with his hearing to this day, he said he outgrew it as he got
older. As hearing got easier, rapping and making music became an ever larger part of his life, but
Trevor made a concerted effort to avoid the tropes that he felt most rappers would fall into.

His first album “Uneducated” has an overtly positive tone. The album’s title does not mean
lacking an education, but refers to unlearning the stereotypes and negative biases that most of the
kids from the projects grow up with. As far as Trevor was concerned, he had to un-educate
himself of those ideas, especially as he got older. Most of what Trevor wrote and sang about flew
in the face of what rap music normally sounded like in the late 90s and early 2000s.

“I hated the imagery of gun violence and stuff like that,” he said. “To me it contributed to the
negativity in the culture,” Trevor said. “The guys who I looked up to said keep it genuine and be
yourself, so I kept it positive.”

He never thought he would write an entire extended play dedicated to the stages of grieving or
have to seek grief counseling. Trevor never thought he would be writing hip-hop lyrics about
depression or mental illness, but after Spencer’s suicide, Trevor turned to music as a productive
way to channel is grief into something tangible.

“I probably wrote lyrics every day for three months after Spence passed away, and I looked at
the bodies of work at the end ... they resembled the stages of grieving. So, what I did was just
arrange them in that order,” Mills said. “And I didn't necessarily write them in sequence. But
I did feel that they helped provide some closure.
16
“Writing that up helped me frame Spencer's life, and help me frame who he was to me,” Mills
said. “Because my biggest worry was forgetting him. Forgetting the sound of his voice and
forgetting the impact he had on my life.”

When Mills returned to work in January of the following year, students in the hip hop club at the
high school he was teaching got in on the songwriting. Trevor worked with Simon New, among
other students at Kitsilano, on a number of tracks on his album. New, 22, is currently studying
journalism at Concordia University in Montreal. He says spending time with Trevor at ‘Kits’
really allowed him to explore his passion for it and eventually formed a hip-hop duo with another
student of Trevor’s, Max Stromberg-Maier called Thoughtwatch.
24
New worked closely with
Trevor, and the two became close friends during their shared time in Kitsilano’s hip-hop club.

“(Trevor) inspired a lot of confidence in me and a will to work. That was a really formative time
at the end of my high school years,” New said. “I wasn’t a confident kid, I didn't play sports and
I didn't have a big social circle. And so, I guess I lacked a lot of direction, but I had a real interest
in music.

“(Working on Trevor’s album) was really empowering … Trevor was teaching a class for kids
with attention disorders and we would do shows at the gym, like before basketball games and
stuff, and he would bring out kids that were struggling at home, and were struggling with life and
with school to perform with him,” New said. “He wanted for kids to hear relatable stuff about
depression and those sorts of things.”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
24
Simon New. Personal interview, June 10, 2019.

17
After several months of work, Trevor’s “Evidence of a Struggle” was born, a title chosen
because of something the police officer who investigated his brother’s suicide said to him. The
officer told Mills that there was no evidence of a struggle at the scene of the crime, but Trevor
knew that simply wasn’t true.

“I chose “Evidence of a Struggle” as the title is to dignify the internal struggle that takes place
within those people who take their lives and to honor that. It's not their ‘Plan A,’ you know,”
Trevor said. “This is something that's desperate, a desperate act by people who are in an extreme
state of struggle.”

Along with his album came a dedication to extending the conversation around mental health and
suicide prevention. The night Trevor launched the album he performed the entire work in front of
a sold-out crowd at the biggest theater in Vancouver.

He has since performed at schools, marches and mental health summits across Canada in an
effort to raise awareness about the struggles his brother faced.
25
In an interview with UBC’s
men’s health research center he was asked about why he now chooses to rap and sing about
suicide and depression. His response was, “It happens, and it happens in secret.”
26

“I’ve seen a lot of intangible results,” he said. “But I will say, kids, when we do perform and we
do our thing, they genuinely open up to us about this stuff. And I feel like it's a really effective
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
25
Trevor Mills. Personal interview, June 16, 2019.
26
Men’s Health Research Center, UBC. Evidence of A Struggle. Performed by Trevor Mills. (2016, Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada). Video.
18
means for starting the conversation. I would say tens of thousands of people have been affected
by this and have heard the message. It’s gained national attention, but the thing is I continue to
do my work with my day-to-day job in school, so that sort of limits me a bit. But you know, it's
been very well received.”

Trevor has performed countless shows, spoken to thousands of people, young and old, about the
importance of mental health and raised more than $80,000 dollars for mental health initiatives in
the city of Vancouver, and he’s done it the way he knows best – through the power of music.

The “Evidence of a Struggle” extended play is the result of seven months of grief and healing. It
has seven songs long and just under 24 minutes in total. The first song on the EP is “Hood
Boys,” and is a manifestation of the regret and sorrow Trevor felt after Spencer’s death. The last
song, titled “Breathe,” is about releasing the tension that builds up after the loss of a loved one.

At the end of “Breathe,” you hear waves rushing towards a shoreline, and then receding. The last
words Trevor says on the album are a calls to action to rally behind a cause, to take action to

support those who need help. In the last verse of the album Trevor says, “Real talk on an issue,
let’s improve the way the system is. Death is a derivative, the current plan is primitive. People
aren’t prioritized. Take action, get organized.” Since Trevor has started working as a mental
health advocate he has also been awarded City of Vancouver Award of Excellence in 2017. But
he said he doesn’t do it for the fame or recognition, instead he does it to empower the people
around him.

19
“I think crisis and tragedy can bring people together. And there is a tremendous opportunity
when those things happen to do that,” Mills said. “But a closed mouth doesn't get
fed, and if you don't share with your community, you don't have an opportunity to pull people
together and you don’t get to heal.”

20
Bibliography
“Census of Canada Municipal Census Populations (1921-2011),” Table 18, StatCan, accessed
May 16, 2019,
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Census/MunicipalPopulations.
“Excessive Alcohol Use and Risks to Men's Health.” U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
www.cdc.gov. March 7, 2016. Accessed May 2, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/
alcohol/fact-sheets/mens-health.htm.
Kimmel, Michael. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York:
HarperCollins, 2008.
“Men and Depression. By The Numbers,” American Psychological Association. December 2015.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/12/numbers.
Men’s Health Research Center, UBC. “Evidence of A Struggle”. Performed by Trevor Mills.
Filmed in 2016 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Video.
Murphy, Megan. “Does Simon Fraser University Need a Men’s Center?” The Tyee. May 3, 2012.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2012/05/03/SFU-Mens-Centre/
“National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 68, No. 9 June 24, 2019,” U.S. Centers for Disease
Control. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf
Oliffe, John et al. “Canadian Men’s Health Literacy: A Nationally Representative Survey.”
Society For Public Health Education (2019). 1-10.
Richard, Joanne. "Male Suicide: Many Suffer in Silence." Toronto Sun. September 14, 2017.
https://torontosun.com/2017/09/14/male-suicide-many-suffer-in-
silence/wcm/b67096e5- e0b7-4e28-af0c-42e8e4 68990b.
21
“Summit on Women and Depression,” American Psychological Association. April 2002.
Accessed May 19, 2019. https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/depression/
summit-2002.pdf.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Canadians are taking a candidly grassroots approach to men's health. In Canada, a small non-profit, a musician, and a university all work towards the same goal: to better the men of today to help build healthier families tomorrow.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Yekikian, Nicholas Sahak (author)

Core Title How Canadians are pushing the conversation around men's health forward

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 12/12/2019

Defense Date 12/12/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Health,masculinity,men,men's health,Mental Health,OAI-PMH Harvest,Suicide

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Parks, Michael (committee chair), Bellantoni, Christina (committee member), Davis, Laura (committee member)

Creator Email nicholasyekikian@gmail.com,nyekikia@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-254269

Unique identifier UC11674937

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Legacy Identifier etd-YekikianNi-8059.pdf

Dmrecord 254269

Document Type Thesis

Rights Yekikian, Nicholas Sahak

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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