Every two hours in the UK, someone’s friend, brother, boyfriend or husband takes their life. I was very close to losing my brother only a few months ago; something which I am still struggling to come to terms with.

I will never forget that phone call, as much as I try, and believe me I’ve tried everything.

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It was a Wednesday evening, and my friends and I had decided to get dressed up and play ‘pub golf’ and age-old tradition amongst university students, which, naturally, revolves around alcohol.

Fitted out head to toe in fancy dress, bottle in hand, cigarette in the other, I didn’t have a care in the world; that was until my phone rang.

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I will never forget the moment I took myself to a quite corner and accepted the call from my little brother – who is normally abysmal at communicating, particularly whilst he is at university, all the way up in Manchester.

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“Hey whats up, you okay? You never call this is weird” I calmly said.

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It still to this day brings a lump to my throat when thinking back to that precise moment I first heard him, his cries, his voice.

Never in a million years did I think I would be talking my younger brother out of committing suicide – he’s funny, confident, attractive, clever – so why? Why was I in this position?

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He had no history of mental illness, he has friends, he had a girlfriend – who subsequently left after struggling to cope with him – our parents are together, he has never had to struggle in life, so why suicide?

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Eventually, once I had calmed him down, he proceeded to tell me that he had been burning himself and self harming for over three months – something I had failed to notice during our last weeks at home together.

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I asked him the seemingly obvious question of why he self harms, and he said “I wanted a physical representation of how much pain I am in mentally – I may look fine upon first glance, but deep down I’m hurting so much I can’t take it.”

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“I play for the lacrosse team at Manchester University, I have to be strong, I can’t be sad, I can’t be depressed – but in reality I am, but I have nobody to talk too about it, it’s not ‘accepted’.”

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He was mentally exhausted, and  was quite literally on the brink of life and death.

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Words cannot even describe how thankful I am that he called me that day and that I was able to talk him out of it.

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But for some families, they sadly do not have the chance to speak to their loved ones when they are in that mindset.They don’t have the opportunity to try to persuade them not to commit suicide – I myself could have been in their position.

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This is the reason why I have chosen to investigate male suicides. I want to investigate why suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45, challenge the stigma surrounding discussing mental health issues within men, and highlight the struggle of the family members left behind.