An award-winning former Army Commando has spoken of how he was left feeling suicidal following the birth of his first child in 2016. It nearly led to the breakdown of his marriage as he developed post-natal depression.
Now reconnected with his wife and a dad for a second time, Dan Stanley, 38, is fighting to end the stigma around mental illness in men and runs a thriving support organisation, BetterMen. Dan lives in Swansea, South Wales, with his businesswoman wife Rachael Flanagan, 34, and their children, Sophia, five, and Spencer, three.
He said: “I wasn’t sure at first if my feelings were down to the fatigue of having a newborn, but it escalated beyond the baby blues. “The standard tiredness became something much more sinister.
“But, being a man, I’d been conditioned to believe these messages that men have to be strong, silent, successful. It kept me in a place where I couldn’t even interpret how I felt let alone share that with my wife. It left me with this self-induced shame I just couldn’t get out of.”
Ill-equipped to cope with the emotional stress of having a newborn, Dan believes his issues were created by a “perfect storm” of societal expectation and personal experience.
He said: “I didn’t have a dad in my life growing up. My granddad was great, but he taught me the practicalities of life, not the emotions.”
Dan entered the military when he was 18, rising through the ranks and becoming one of only a small handful of people in the UK who were able to redesign an all arms commando course, also winning a commendation for contribution to commando forces. But, after 11 years, he left the military in 2012 to join Rachael in her successful cleaning business, where she now employs more than 300 people.
His sense of identity was severely challenged by the move to civilian life, though, leaving Dan to look back on his last day with the Army with added poignancy. Recalling how he was asked to identify the body of one of his soldiers who had been killed in a road traffic accident before he left, he said: “I drove up the M5 pretty much in tears.”
He added: “At the time I thought it was grief, but now I realise it was also loss of my own identity.”
After a year-and-a-half working with Rachael, Dan was feeling lost and decided to launch a new venture as a personal trainer. He worked supporting athletes preparing for events such as triathlons and mountain climbing.
But he feels now that he was covering up his issues, saying: “I wasn’t sure what my goals were or who I wanted to become. I threw myself into work and exercise to avoid those existential questions I couldn’t answer.”
During this identity crisis, Dan experienced “the best and worst day” of his life on December 6, 2016, when Sophia was born. Far from the picture of happiness he had envisaged for his family, he felt worse than ever.
He explained: “I was there for Sophia, practically. I wanted to be strong and help Rachael. But, inside, I just felt adrift.”
He added: “I was 6ft 2in, weighed 15st, was in great shape and winning national sporting championships. But I was at my most fragile mentally.
“No one ever tells you how challenging it will be being a new parent. We’d done an antenatal course and all the focus was on the mother. Rachel and I fell into a spiral and were blaming each other for what we were and weren’t doing in the marriage.”
The couple tried marriage counselling when Sophia was four months old, but Dan feels he was “too far gone” and “stuck in a spiral of negativity”.
Falling deeper into depression, he said: “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even interpret how I really felt”.
To combat this, he threw himself into exercising – waking up at 3am to run a half marathon before starting work in his personal training business. By the time their daughter was seven months old, Dan made the decision to leave the marriage and move out.
It was then, he said, that he realised the problem was not parenting, but his inability to communicate.
He explained: “There was so much toxicity in the marriage. I felt worthless. We couldn’t even have a civil conversation. I couldn’t communicate and so Rachael couldn’t understand how I was feeling.”
It was around this time that Dan began feeling suicidal.
He said: “I was internalising all this shame and animosity towards myself. I’d gone from being a leader of men to not even being able to lead my own life.
“I couldn’t believe my life had imploded. I was just 33.”
He added: “I felt I’d done everything right to achieve fulfilment and success. But I was miserable and suffering in silence. I felt such a huge level of shame around it all.”
Come Christmas day 2017, all alone, having lied to friends saying he was busy and having jointly decided with Rachael it was best for him not to spend the day with Sophia, Dan ran 13 miles, came home and drank over a bottle of red wine. But he reached a turning point as he impulsively began reading a self-help book given to him by a client.
He said: “I’d told myself I’d never read this book when she gave it to me. But then, all alone on Christmas Day, I started it.
“By page 50, I’d discovered something no one had ever told me. I could turn down the volume on the critical voice in my head.”
The next day, Dan and Rachael went for a walk along a local beach with Sophia. He said: “Two young, healthy people, this beautiful baby all wrapped up in her carrier and our spaniel running around. We looked like a picture-perfect family. But we were miles from it.”
Still, all was not lost and, over a meal in a pub that same day, the couple decided to begin the process of trying again. Dan closed his personal training business in 2018 to focus on his mental health, using the money he had saved for the expected divorce to fund a career break, spending time with Sophia, cycling, walking on the beach, reflecting and staying at a retreat.
The idea that he may have postnatal depression (PND) was suggested to Dan during counselling and he is now committed to dismantling the stigma around male mental health that he says comes, in part, from men finding it hard to discuss their feelings.
He said: “I didn’t even know men could get PND. You just don’t hear about it. I looked it up after the session and was just like, ‘That is me’.”
According to the National Childbirth Trust, the UK’s leading charity for parents, one in 10 dads will experience depression during their partner’s pregnancy, although exact figures on the numbers of men suffering after the birth are not available. This, together with the shocking fact that suicide is the number one killer of men under 45 in the UK, according to The Samaritans, fed into Dan’s career change.
He said: “I felt I had currency to men due to my military, sporting and business background. I wanted to make my experiences something that could help bust this myth of masculinity that professional success equals personal happiness.”
In November 2018, Dan launched BetterMen, a coaching practice where he enables men to become clearer on their purpose, in support of seeking fulfilment and happiness. He has worked with men from all walks of life, from famous sportspeople to reality TV stars and top executives, also setting up a walking group called Men & Mountains, where a group of men now meet up once a month to climb mountains, connect and talk in nature.
Incredibly, Dan says both he and Rachael, “worked on ourselves and on the marriage” and came to a place where they felt able to have a second child, Spencer, in March 2019. And this time Dan – who hopes sharing his experiences will encourage more men to talk and seek help with their mental health if they need it – displayed no symptoms of PND.
Meanwhile, Rachael admits that it came as a complete shock to her when her husband experienced problems with his mental health.
She said: “Not for one minute did I ever consider that my ‘strong, full of life’ husband would struggle with his mental health. At the time, neither of us considered that what he was experiencing was potentially PND, but his inability to speak about how he felt, coupled with the challenges of being a first time parent broke our marriage.
“If we’d know more about the number of couples that struggle postnatally, I am sure our experience would have been different, but now I am very proud of Dan and what he represents. I see first-hand how his own experience makes him so incredibly good at supporting other men as they navigate challenges in their own lives.”
Therapist and author Marisa Peer confirmed that male PND is not a complete rarity.
She said: “PND in men is more common than people realise and it often goes undetected. It’s important to be aware of tell-tale signs, such as a shorter temper, uncharacteristic levels of anxiety, mood swings and general feeling of being low.
“This is typically assumed to be simply sleep deprivation, but it can be more serious. Just like women, men experience a change in their hormone levels following the birth of the baby and are also more susceptible if they are under 25, have a history of depression, or the mother is suffering from PND.”
