Let’s talk about the pain men don’t voice
What you need to know:
- We must ask ourselves: What kind of Uganda are we building? One where men must break before they are believed? Or one where they are allowed to bend, softly, honestly, and without shame? We urgently need national data on autoimmune diseases.
June in Uganda began on a spirited note with back-to-back public holidays (Martyrs’ Day and Eid celebrations.) A month marked by reverence, reflection, and rest. And yet, as the days rolled quietly into routine, one observance risked being forgotten: Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month.
For many men, mental health still feels like uncharted territory. From boyhood, they are taught to be unshaken and silent in struggle. Emotional endurance is praised, while emotional expression is quietly punished. But silence isn’t neutral.
It doesn’t merely stay in the mind, it settles into the body. And in Uganda, that silence is beginning to show in ways more dangerous than we are prepared for.
Across the country and continent autoimmune diseases are on the rise. These are illnesses where the body’s immune system turns against itself.
Among the most debilitating is Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a condition that can take away mobility, blur vision, and dull sensation. What begins as fatigue or tingling can escalate into life altering disability. Once considered rare in Africa, MS and related diseases are now becoming more visible.
The Multiple Sclerosis International Federation estimates over 49,000 cases in Africa, and that number is growing. In Uganda, while national figures remain scarce, hospitals like Mulago and Nsambya are seeing increasing cases not just of MS, but of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune conditions.
Alarmingly, many men present late not due to lack of symptoms, but because of deeply ingrained cultural messaging.
At rheumatology centres in Kampala, patients are arriving only when symptoms are advanced when movement falters, vision dims, or the exhaustion becomes unbearable.
By then, treatment is harder, more costly and less effective. As trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté writes in the book “When the Body Says No”: “When we have been prevented from learning how to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.” This isn’t just poetic, it is physiological.
Emotional suppression, particularly in chronically stressed environments, weakens the immune system. The body hears what the mind tries to silence.
Ugandan men carry invisible loads from the pressure to provide, to lead and endure without complaint. When there is no outlet for these burdens, the body often becomes the battleground. A man wakes up unable to lift his arm. Another loses his vision.
A third is overcome by crushing fatigue. Some families turn to spiritual explanations, unsure how else to interpret these silent invaders. Others chase answers for years, watching helplessly as their loved ones decline. This is not just an urban problem, it is not confined to rural areas, it is not poor, nor rich.
It is everywhere and growing, yet when men dare to voice their pain, they are often told: “You are soft. This generation is weak.” But is it weak to speak? Or is it a radical kind of courage? Perhaps this generation is not weaker but wiser.
Perhaps we are beginning to learn what our fathers and grandfathers never had the language or permission to say -that pain cannot heal when hidden and that asking for help is not failure.
We must ask ourselves: What kind of Uganda are we building? One where men must break before they are believed? Or one where they are allowed to bend, softly, honestly, and without shame? We urgently need national data on autoimmune diseases.
We need more training for doctors, more accessible mental health care, and more room for men to feel without fear of ridicule. We need to normalize therapy, checkups, and emotional honesty. And most of all, we need to stop calling silence strength.
Noella Nsaba Mutesi,
