Boys wellness program to return to Eskasoni First Nation after pandemic hiatus

A wellness group aimed at teaching boys it's OK to ask for help will return in the fall to the high school at Eskasoni First Nation on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.

GuysWork, a program that started in the province in 2012, brings together male facilitators with a group of adolescent boys to talk about a range of issues from health care, mental health resources, intimate partner violence and keys to healthy relationships. It's billed as a safe space to address toxic masculinity.

The program found its way to Allison Bernard Memorial High School in Eskasoni, 270 kilometres northeast of Halifax, in 2018. Principal Newell Johnson said she saw a change in students who participated, in particular they were kinder.

"It was like there was a shell that was removed and they were more vulnerable and they were more at peace and they could put themselves in your perspective," said Johnson.

"For the guys, I guess there's not really a space for them to be able to talk freely about some of the things and some of the issues that they deal with."

The program at the school halted in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now it's returning in the fall. She said she's working to have more in-house staff trained to facilitate, which is why it stopped before.

"Some youth may need guidance and to be shown that there are positives in being good, in being respectful, in being responsible. A lot of these kids, I find they think that it's cool to be macho, to be tough and rough," said Johnson.

Morris Green, founder of GuysWork, said the program was started to address a province-wide issue: boys weren't accessing health centres at the same rate as girls. He said the program was about encouraging young men to ask for help.

He said men have poor health outcomes in a number of areas with shorter life expectancy than women, they have more frequent attempted and completed suicides, more alcohol and drug misuse, and more brain injuries.

"Then if you look at some specific groups of men under the umbrella of male identified, you have Indigenous and Black men who have even worse outcomes," said Green.

He said collaborative research with St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., has shown GuysWork has helped to shift attitudes around masculinity but more research is needed to see if there's a shift in behavioural outcomes.

He said facilitators have noticed a rise in homophobia and transphobia among the new cohorts of boys entering the program, adding GuysWork is only one tool to help address attitudes like sexism, misogyny and bullying and has to be attached to other strategies.

"It's really about getting comfortable being more themselves and presenting their masculinity in a more authentic and what is almost always a more healthy way," said Green.