MEN’S MENTAL HEALTH AND COMMUNITY | OCTOBER 2026

October is Mental Health Month.

Every year, we see the campaigns, statistics and reminders to check in on our mates, talk about mental health and ask the people around us if they are okay. All of that matters. But this year, at Memoirs By Him, we wanted to do something a little different.

We wanted to create somewhere for men to actually go. Not a seminar. Not a room where everyone is expected to sit in a circle and reveal the most difficult thing happening in their life. Not another social media post telling men they need to talk more.

We wanted to create a place where men could simply turn up, have a coffee, eat something, play a game, meet someone new, have a conversation, enjoy some friendly competition and spend time around other men.

There is no pressure to share anything. There is no expectation that every conversation needs to become a deep one. But if a meaningful conversation happens somewhere in between, even better.

That idea has become Men in Motion.

As we head into Mental Health Month in October 2026, it feels like the right time to explain why we are building it, what we hope it can become and why we believe community deserves a bigger place in the conversation around men’s mental health.

A LITTLE CONNECTION GOES A LONG WAY

There is something particularly fitting about Mental Health Month this year. The 2026 Mental Health Month theme in NSW is “A Little Connection Goes a Long Way.” Nationally, the theme is “Together We Thrive.”

We didn’t create Men in Motion because of those themes, but when we saw them, they felt remarkably close to what we had already been trying to build.

Perhaps supporting men’s mental health does not always have to begin by asking a man to talk about his mental health. Sometimes it can begin with something much simpler: connection.

It might be a coffee, a shared interest, a game, a conversation about work, someone asking what you have been up to lately, meeting another person going through a similar stage of life or simply getting out of the house and spending time around people.

These things can sound small, but maybe that is exactly the point. Not every positive interaction needs to be life-changing to matter. Sometimes a little connection really can go a long way.

THE IDEA BEHIND MEMOIRS BY HIM

Memoirs By Him started with a journal, but it was never really about paper.

When we created The Journal, we built more than 220 prompts covering different areas of a man’s life. The purpose was to encourage men to stop and think about things they might otherwise move past without ever really considering.

Relationships, purpose, family, health, career, money, the past, the future, the things we are proud of and the things we rarely say out loud.

We believed there was value in creating a private space where a man could be completely honest with himself. No audience. No judgement. No requirement to have the right words. Just a page and a question that might make you stop and think.

As Memoirs By Him grew, though, we started to realise that what happened after the page mattered too.

Reflection can help you understand yourself, but we also need other people. We started thinking about what Memoirs By Him could become if we took some of the reflection that happens privately through journaling and created opportunities for genuine connection in the real world.

That became the beginning of Men in Motion.

MEN DON’T NECESSARILY NEED ANOTHER LECTURE

There are already extraordinary organisations doing important work in mental health. We are not trying to replace them. We are not psychologists or counsellors, and Men in Motion is not intended to be a substitute for professional mental health care.

What we can do is create community, and we think there is room for more of it.

One of the challenges with conversations about men’s mental health is that we can unintentionally make every interaction feel incredibly serious. We hear that men need to open up, men need to be vulnerable and men need to talk. Those messages can be important, but they are not necessarily where every man is ready to start.

Maybe you are not ready to talk. Maybe you do not even know what is wrong. Maybe nothing is particularly wrong.

Maybe you are simply lonely.

Maybe friendships that were once effortless have slowly become harder to maintain as careers, relationships, children and responsibilities took over. Maybe you still have plenty of mates, but most conversations stay around sport, work or what happened on the weekend.

Or maybe you are doing completely fine and simply want to meet some good people.

We wanted to create something for that man too.

You should not need to be struggling before community becomes valuable.

WHY MEN’S MENTAL HEALTH STILL NEEDS OUR ATTENTION

Men’s mental health in Australia cannot be reduced to a single statistic, but some numbers are difficult to ignore.

Around one in five Australians aged 16 to 85 experiences a mental disorder within a 12-month period. When we look specifically at suicide, the gender difference remains stark, with Australian data continuing to show that approximately three-quarters of people who die by suicide are male.

Those numbers deserve attention, but statistics can sometimes make an intensely human issue feel strangely distant.

Behind every number is a person. A son, father, husband, partner, brother, colleague or friend.

Mental health is also much bigger than crisis. It includes how connected we feel, whether we have people around us, how we deal with pressure, whether we have a sense of purpose, how comfortable we are asking for help and whether there are places in our lives where we feel that we belong.

That is why we believe community belongs in the conversation.

WHAT DOES COMMUNITY ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE FOR MEN?

When people hear the word “community”, they might imagine something formal. We don’t.

Community can be incredibly ordinary.

It can be the people at the gym who notice when you haven’t been there for a week. The group that meets for coffee every Saturday morning. The mate who sends you something ridiculous at 11pm. The people you play football with. A running club, a group chat, a neighbour, a barber, a workplace or a room full of people you didn’t know two hours earlier.

What matters is the feeling underneath it: I belong somewhere.

Modern life gives us more ways to communicate than at any point in history, but communication and connection are not necessarily the same thing.

You can have hundreds of contacts in your phone and still feel like you don’t have anyone to call. You can spend hours watching other people’s lives online without having a meaningful interaction yourself. You can work beside people every day without them really knowing you.

Community gives us something different. It creates repeated human contact. Over time, familiarity can become trust, and trust can make genuine conversation easier.

Sometimes that conversation stays completely ordinary. Sometimes it doesn’t. Both have value.

WHY MEN IN MOTION LOOKS DIFFERENT

That thinking shaped how we approached Men in Motion.

We didn’t want to create an environment where men arrive expecting to discuss mental health for several hours. Instead, we asked ourselves a much simpler question: What kind of environment would we actually want to walk into ourselves?

Our answer was good coffee, food, music, games, friendly competition, interesting people and opportunities for genuine interaction.

No pressure and no expectations.

We want Men in Motion to create the conditions for conversation rather than trying to manufacture it.

You might meet someone building a business, someone becoming a father, someone changing careers, someone who has had an extraordinary year or someone who has had a difficult one. You might meet someone who journals every morning or someone who has never written a journal entry in his life.

It doesn’t matter.

The starting point is simply showing up.

SOMETIMES MEN TALK BETTER WHEN WE’RE DOING SOMETHING

There is another reason games, activities and friendly competition are part of what we are creating. Conversation does not always have to happen face-to-face across a table.

Think about some of the best conversations you have had with another man. They may have happened while driving, walking, training, playing golf, working on something, having a beer, playing pool or standing beside a barbecue.

There can be something different about talking when the conversation isn’t the only thing happening. The pressure disappears. Silence isn’t awkward. The subject can change naturally, and a serious conversation can sit comfortably between ten completely unserious ones.

That feels natural to us.

Rather than trying to change the way men interact, perhaps there is value in creating more opportunities for those interactions to happen.

WHERE JOURNALING FITS

There is another type of connection that matters too: connection with yourself.

This is where everything comes back to why Memoirs By Him exists.

Journaling creates a moment where you stop consuming and start thinking. For a few minutes, nobody is telling you what to think. There is no algorithm, notification or comment section. It is simply you, a question and whatever answer comes to mind.

What am I proud of? What am I avoiding? Who matters most to me? What kind of father, partner or friend do I want to be? What would I change if nobody else’s opinion mattered?

You don’t need to answer those questions publicly. Some of the most important answers may never be shown to another person.

For men who have never journaled before, our Journaling for Men Guide explores how journaling works, why men are increasingly using it and how to start without turning it into another task on the to-do list.

Private reflection and external community are not opposites. We think they complement each other.

Journaling gives you somewhere to look inward. Community gives you somewhere to look outward.

Men in Motion is our attempt to create space for both.

MENTAL HEALTH DOESN’T BEGIN AT CRISIS POINT

One of the biggest changes we would like to see in the conversation around men’s mental health is simple: we shouldn’t wait until someone is struggling to care about their mental health.

We don’t treat physical health that way. You don’t need to have heart disease before exercise becomes worthwhile. You don’t need to be injured before mobility matters. You don’t need to be unwell before nutrition becomes important.

Mental wellbeing deserves the same preventative thinking.

Reflection, friendship, purpose, exercise and belonging can all form part of looking after our wellbeing. Knowing when and where to seek professional support matters too.

None of these things is a magic solution. Mental illness is complex, and community cannot replace appropriate professional care.

But creating healthier environments around men is something all of us can participate in.

OUR FIRST MEN IN MOTION GATHERING

This October, during Mental Health Month 2026, we are opening our doors in Marrickville, Sydney, and bringing Men in Motion into the real world.

There will be coffee, food, games, friendly competitions and conversation. There will be people from different backgrounds, professions and stages of life, and there is no script for what needs to happen.

That is intentional.

You do not need to arrive with a story. You don’t need to talk about mental health. You don’t need to journal and you don’t need to know anybody.

You can simply come along and be part of it.

Because sometimes connection starts with nothing more complicated than being in the same room.

WHAT WE HOPE MEN IN MOTION BECOMES

The October gathering is only one part of what we are building.

Our bigger vision for Men in Motion is a community that continues beyond a single day. We want to create somewhere men can share goals, encourage each other, reflect, learn from one another, celebrate progress, find people with common interests and have conversations that might not happen elsewhere.

And sometimes, we just want it to be somewhere to have some fun.

We want to experiment with smaller groups, challenges, shared goals, community rewards, conversations and experiences that give people a reason to keep coming back.

Some ideas will work and some probably won’t. We are comfortable with that.

We would rather build something real alongside the people using it than pretend we already know exactly what a men’s community should look like.

Men in Motion will evolve, and we want the men who become part of it to help shape what it becomes.

MAYBE WE NEED TO MAKE CONNECTION EASIER

There is a lot of discussion about encouraging men to reach out, and that is important. But there is another question worth asking: Are we creating enough places where reaching out feels natural?

It is easy to tell someone to connect. Building environments where connection actually happens is harder.

Maybe the answer isn’t always another campaign telling men to talk. Sometimes it might be organising the coffee, starting the group, inviting the mate, creating the event, asking someone to train with you, making the introduction, putting the phone down, sitting around the table or simply giving people a reason to show up.

The NSW Mental Health Month theme for 2026 captures what we are trying to achieve: A Little Connection Goes a Long Way.

We believe that.

And we want to find out just how far it can go.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Memoirs By Him began with the belief that men deserve somewhere to put the things they haven’t said out loud yet.

The Journal created that space privately. Men in Motion is our attempt to build something alongside it: a community.

Not because every man is struggling. Not because every conversation needs to be deep. And not because we think we have solved men’s mental health.

We haven’t.

We are simply building something we would want to be part of ourselves. A place to reflect, a reason to get together, a chance to meet someone new, some friendly competition, a coffee, a conversation and, hopefully, a genuine connection.

This Mental Health Month, that feels like a pretty good place to start.

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