Bear Grylls is tackling his biggest challenge yet, the male mental health crisis, with new app, Mettle. Photo / National Geographic
The former SAS soldier’s recently launched app, Mettle, aims to improve men’s mental health at a time when it’s in crisis, writes Nick Harding.
For a seemingly fearless adventurer and former SAS soldier tough enough to survive a back-breaking parachute accident and climb Everest 18 months later, Bear Grylls OBE, is surprisingly candid about his emotions.
“The last time I cried? Last night watching the movie Maestro,” he offers. “I cry a lot and I cry more as I’ve gotten older.”
In fact, Grylls, 49, says crying is cathartic and every man should do it.
“If men weren’t designed to cry, we wouldn’t have tear ducts. Nature and the good Lord don’t give us many things that don’t have a purpose. We have tear ducts, so we are meant to cry,” he proclaims.
Grylls, it turns out, is a big advocate of letting it all out.
“You’ve got to let emotions flow. If you don’t, they build up. Nature tells us this. If you dam a river the water builds up, it gets stagnant and eventually it bursts its banks and causes damage and destruction. You have to let emotions flow and tears are a big part of it.”
He recounts that on his first date with his wife Shara, they went to watch Titanic, which left him a blubbering wreck.
“Not a lot has changed,” he shrugs. “You have to wear your heart on your sleeve. There is a time to stand up and be fearless and relentless, and there’s a time to be vulnerable.”
Grylls is talking about emotions because he is a man on a mission. Having conquered the world’s highest peak, trekked Antarctica, rowed the Atlantic and paddled down the Thames naked in a bathtub, he is tackling his biggest challenge yet, the male mental health crisis.
The British adventurer, author and motivational speaker is co-founder of Mettle, a mental fitness app developed especially for men. With input from Imperial College London and UK ambassador for mental health, Dr Alex George, Mettle is backed with £2.5 million ($5.1m) seed funding by angel investors and aims to address a significant gap in the market for wellness apps for men. It provides a mental health toolkit, giving users assistance with meditation, mind-hacking breath-work and hypnosis.
“Looking after mental health should be like going to the gym and doing your best to be fit and healthy,” says Grylls. “You have to put your health on the front foot, so you are not always having to visit doctors. It’s about building resilience and pre-empting problems.”
The app and Grylls’s involvement is timely. Men are not doing so well, especially middle-aged men. According to a 2019 report by mental health charity MIND, 43 per cent of men surveyed admitted to regularly feeling low or worried and 10 per cent admitted to having suicidal thoughts. Men were more likely than women to drink alone or take recreational drugs to relax when feeling worried or down. In 2021 around three-quarters of suicides in England and Wales were men (74 per cent), which was three times more than the rate for women and consistent with long-term trends. Suicide remains the main cause of death for men under 50 and men between the ages of 50 and 54 had the highest suicide rate of any demographic according to 2021 statistics.
“We are under pressure like never before,” says Grylls. “Men are still often the breadwinners, they are trying to do their best as husbands, partners and fathers. There is the cost-of-living crisis, there is concern about the climate, there is more anxiety and more change and more pressure. Social media adds to that, because now you must be perfect.
“All these aspects are surmountable on their own, but they stack up. Humans are adaptable but we have never had so much pressure. Everything changes so fast, and the pace of change is like a tsunami.”
Grylls has three sons aged 14, 17 and 20. He worries about the pressures they face, particularly as social media plays such an important role in lives nowadays.
“We never had any of this stuff growing up, we had room to make mistakes and room to fail. Kids today don’t have that luxury. We try to keep open comms with our boys and set examples. That doesn’t mean being perfect, it means talking to them and being honest.
“Most of the conversations I have with our boys are encouraging. I tell them how well they are doing and that they are doing better than I ever would have done at their age with the pressures they have.”
Born Edward Michael Grylls (Bear was a nickname given to him as a baby by his sister which stuck), he spent three years as an SAS reservist where he became a survival skills expert. His SAS career was cut short after a free-fall parachuting accident in Africa left him with three shattered vertebrae. After months of military rehabilitation, he went on to become one of the youngest climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest at 23. In the following years he completed several daredevil expeditions – rowing across the North Atlantic in a rigid inflatable boat and set a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, held in a hot air balloon at 24,262 feet.
His TV series include Emmy-nominated Man vs. Wild and Running Wild with Bear Grylls, in which he took public figures on extreme adventures. His guests included US President Barack Obama, Julia Roberts, Roger Federer, Kate Winslet and Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. He’s also a Chief Scout and honorary lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve.
One of Grylls’s strongest influences was his father, Conservative MP Sir Michael Grylls, who died of a heart attack when Bear was 26. Within the same year, Shara, who he just married, also lost her father. He admits it was one of the hardest periods of his life.
“I struggled and I didn’t really have anyone to talk to,” he recalls. “Shara and I had just married; we were both young and we’d both just lost our dads. I felt ill-equipped to cope. We were trying to support two widows who were both struggling. We were at a stage in life when we were trying to figure out what to do for a living and coping with grief while everyone else our age was having fun.
“Dad died suddenly so it was a huge shock. I miss him every day. Shara arguably had it harder. She watched her dad die slowly of MS which he was diagnosed with when she was a kid, so her grief was riddled with trauma and heartache.”
At that low point of his life, Grylls sought help and had counselling.
“I had a few sessions,” he reveals. “I’m not sure how good it was. I was clutching around in the dark trying to find my way. Ultimately, I just got my head down and got on with it.”
A committed Christian, he believes his network of good friends and his faith got him through the tough time.
“When it comes to being mentally resilient there is a place for getting your head down and working through it, but it’s not enough on its own,” he says. “You need each other, and you need to be equipped and resourced to deal with life’s challenges. People are more dialled into that now.”
And when it comes to an ideal male support network, Grylls reveals that one of the most emotionally tuned-in and open environments he has experienced was the SAS, where, perhaps counter to expectations, toxic masculinity and emotional repression were not significant factors.
“Everyone was much more emotionally switched on there, there was less ego and machismo. They were much more honest. I had genuine, real friendships. People showed much more vulnerability. That’s why I loved it and felt it was much more my bag. They shared struggles and shared each other’s burdens.”
And even regular soldiers are ahead of the curve now when it comes to checking in about mental health.
“Soldiers have got much better at this, both serving and veterans,” says Grylls. “They are ahead of the general male population because in the last 15 or 20 years they’ve been encouraged to talk about this stuff and resource people who can help, which we all need to do.”
This is one of the driving motivations behind Mettle. “If we don’t get a handle on this and start to address mental fitness,” concludes Grylls, “this epidemic will never end.”
The Mettle app is available to download on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. 14-day free trial, thereafter £12.99 ($26) a month, £99.99 annually.
The new free open-air saltwater pool is already proving popular.