Steven is forty-three years old and has lived in Possilpark his whole life. He works shifts at a distribution warehouse on the north side of the city, has two teenage kids who live with their mum, and, for most of the last decade, has dealt with depression in the way he was raised to deal with most things: quietly and alone.
'I didn't think what I had counted,' he says, sitting in the community hall where Vibrant Health Advocates runs its monthly drop-in. 'I thought depression was something that happened to people who couldn't cope. And I was coping, just about. Getting up, going to work, doing what needed doing. I didn't realise that just about coping isn't actually fine.'
The turning point came during a difficult winter two years ago. Steven had taken time off work with what he'd described to his employer as a back problem. He wasn't sleeping, had stopped seeing friends, and found himself spending entire weekends at home with the curtains closed. A neighbour who knew him well passed him a flyer for our drop-in. He came, he says, mostly to get out of the flat.
At the drop-in he spoke to one of our community health navigators — a trained volunteer who helps people understand what support is available and how to access it. Within a few weeks, Steven had a referral to a talking therapies service through his GP, had joined a men's social group that meets fortnightly, and had connected with a local welfare rights adviser who helped him access a benefit he hadn't known he was entitled to.
'None of it was complicated once I knew it existed,' he says. 'That's the thing. The help was there. I just didn't know where to look, and I didn't think I deserved to look.'
Steven's story isn't unusual. Research consistently shows that men in deprived urban areas are among the least likely to seek mental health support, and among the most likely to experience the consequences of not doing so. In Glasgow, where male life expectancy in some neighbourhoods is significantly below the national average, the stakes are not abstract.
Our drop-ins run on the last Thursday of every month at three locations across the north of the city. No appointment needed, no forms to fill in on arrival. You can come for a coffee and leave without speaking to anyone if that's what feels manageable. Often that's exactly the right first step.
Steven now volunteers at the Possilpark drop-in himself, two sessions a month. 'I'm not a counsellor or anything like that,' he's quick to clarify. 'I just make tea and talk to people. But sometimes that's what someone needs — to see that another ordinary bloke turned up and it helped.' We think he's underselling it.