A men's mental health charity that aims to give blokes a place to talk will launch a Newcastle chapter on Tuesday. Login or signup to continue reading Tim Hewson, founder of Mongrels Men , said Newcastle would be the charity's 13th location. Weekly meet-ups will be held at the Newcastle Beach kiosk from 6am to 7.
30am for "a walk and talk " and free coffee each Tuesday. Mr Hewson said the idea was to "give guys time to get together and break down barriers". "Then it's a coffee on us because we reckon it's a cheap investment to get guys talking," he said.
The charity has community champions who run the meet-ups. Newcastle champion Michael Cradock experienced "a series of acute stresses" in recent years working in senior management. "I realised I didn't have the social group around me to talk about those matters.
Then I read about Mongrels Men," Mr Cradock said. "I thought that's exactly what I need - a group meeting regularly, where there's no forced conversation. "The purpose of us meeting is to walk and say what's on our mind, knowing there's bravery around doing that.
" Mr Cradock said Mongrels Men created these "brave spaces" with the idea that "a trouble shared is a trouble halved". During the pandemic, Mr Cradock had scheduled a catch-up call with "one of my first employees in a business I owned in the UK". "We were catching up after many years of losing contact," he said.
"He replied that he had a migraine, then two weeks later he killed himself at age 32. "A brave space .
