I was impressed by Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller’s articulate and honest response to The Lad Bible’s attempt to ‘body shame’ him by posting two contrasting pictures of his physique on their website. The site, which supposedly reflects trending issues and delivers ‘infotainment’ for their target audience of young men aged 16-30, is far from articulate.

A quick scan over their pages reveals a puerile, perverse and narrowed-down take on reality, consisting mainly of laddish banter, jackass antics and objectification of women. Oh, speaking of women, it’s hot on sentimentalised affirmations that boys really love their mummies best of all. What The Lad Bible seems to do best of all is credit their male audience with the levels of intelligence we’d normally associate with a single cell amoeba found on the sea floor. A dark, dark place where the bright lights of an inquiring and intelligent mind cannot possibly survive.

Wentworth Miller responded to the photo, and its mindlessly cruel accompanying caption mocking his weight, by writing about his ongoing struggle with severe depression since his early teens, including his first suicide attempt at age 15. He also spoke of turning to food as a coping mechanism. His response is raw, honest and painful to read. Tellingly, his comments wrung a grovelling apology from The Lad Bible.

Depression is painful. Sometimes, especially for men, it’s deadly. In the UK, 78% of deaths by suicide are male and yet only 38% of NHS referrals for ‘talking therapy’ treatments for depression are for men. One in four women will at some stage in their lives receive treatment for depression, compared with just one man in ten. And these statistics only account for those people who have been able to recognise they are in difficulty and haul themselves along to their GP. The fact is that men, for a variety of socio-cultural reasons, are much less likely to recognise emotional and psychological distress in themselves and even less likely to seek out treatment.

Perhaps this accounts for the fact that over three quarters of those who take their own lives are male; 73% of adults who go missing from home are men; 87% of rough sleepers are men; men are 50% more likely to be detained and compulsorily treated in mental hospitals, and three times more likely than women to become alcohol dependant. The ‘laddish’ banter that is the currency of websites such as The Lad Bible only exacerbates the stigmatisation of male depression.

Instead of locking men down into a shamed silence about their struggle with emotional and psychological difficulties, or worse, ridiculing those men who do speak out, men need to be enabled to find a language that helps them to describe and share their experience of depression.

Too often, men feel they have to stay strong and be in a position to protect and rescue others. Society colludes with this by continuing to praise and value attributes in young men such as their physical strength, not crying in pain when injured or upset, and their ability to compete and defeat opponents.

Men are allowed to cry with joy when their national team wins the World Cup, but they are censored when it comes to crying because they are stressed by work or devastated by the breakdown of a relationship. It’s not fair and it’s not healthy and it shortens men’s lives. It needs to change.

Like depression, the road to recovery and change can be arduous. But we could make a start by challenging the laddish banter culture used by men against men and against women. The language of contemporary banter is often cruel and sadistic, masquerading as a kind of humorous rite of passage into manhood, a tribal test of strength to assess how much humiliation and ridicule a man can take before he crumbles. What doesn’t break you, makes you.

There is no place for the individual in Ladland where only the mob rules and any expressions of difference based on personal values, sexuality, intellect or morality are wiped out by the stampeding herd. For young men in particular, it takes a lot of courage to stand up to this marauding, distorted version of masculinity. Men, and especially young men, need to be encouraged and supported to look after their mental health and wellbeing. A core component of good mental health is feeling able to be yourself, able to say what you are thinking and feeling without fear of rejection or ridicule. Lad culture does nothing to promote the integrity of individual men and seriously dumbs down what it is to be a person.