Mental health: Men die on average six years younger than women and have higher death rates for all leading causes of death, a conference in Dublin will hear tomorrow.
The conference, Mind Your Self, will focus on men's health issues, especially on male mental health wellbeing.
"The aim is to raise awareness among men, and the general population, about men's health," said Sé Franklin, one of the conference organisers. "Men do less well than women in coping with diseases. They don't take care of themselves, they indulge in risk-taking behaviour and they do not present quickly enough to doctors when they develop a health problem."
Mr Franklin, who is a member of the Men's Health Forum in Ireland, which represents various organisations involved in men's health, said the focus this year was on mental health.
It will examine issues such as how men are brought up. "Men are taught to be competitive and to bottle up their illnesses or stress and not to show it," he said.
"By contrast, women talk to each other about such issues, but men don't. Fundamentally, that's the issue," Mr Franklin said.
The organisers also said that men were four times more likely than women to die from suicide and that men's health was under-researched and under-funded.
The conference is being held as part of National Men's Health week. The Men's Health Forum, a North-South body dedicated to improving male health, has linked up with BBC Northern Ireland to push the campaign.
The move comes ahead of a strategy for men's health which the Department of Health will publish later this year, according to Mr Franklin. He said he was delighted the Government was taking this initiative to develop such a strategy.
The keynote speaker at tomorrow's conference is Dr Tony Humphreys, a consultant clinical psychologist who has written several books and papers. Anne Cleary, a lecturer at the school of sociology, University College Dublin, will address the conference on Death rather than disclosure, struggling to be a real man.
There will also be a number of parallel sessions including Mental health education, suicide prevention - initiatives and interventions, The importance of being dad and Gay men's health.
The conference takes place in Wynne's Hotel, Dublin, 10.30am- 4pm. It will be opened by Minister for Health Mary Harney.