When Anthony Kielty of Vita Health Group joined me for a profound conversation, we embarked on an exploration of the landscapes of men's mental health within the LGBTQIA+ community, colored by the hues of personal journeys and societal strides. Anthony's narrative, shaped by the restrictive tendrils of Section 28 legislation, unfolded as we traversed the pathways of educational inclusivity and the ongoing march toward acceptance and authenticity.
Our dialogue blossomed into a discussion on the transformative nature of Pride Month and the ripple effect of allyship. We reflected on the vibrant expressions of Pride events, the cultural richness of LGBTQIA+ contributions, and the personal significance of living one's truth. As the episode wove to a close, Anthony highlighted the undeniable connection between authenticity and mental well-being, leaving us with a portrait of the LGBTQIA+ community's journey—a journey where visibility is not just celebrated but is fundamental to the quest for true equality.
When Anthony Kielty of Vita Health Group joined me for a profound conversation, we embarked on an exploration of the landscapes of men's mental health within the LGBTQIA+ community, colored by the hues of personal journeys and societal strides. Anthony's narrative, shaped by the restrictive tendrils of Section 28 legislation, unfolded as we traversed the pathways of educational inclusivity and the ongoing march toward acceptance and authenticity.
Our dialogue blossomed into a discussion on the transformative nature of Pride Month and the ripple effect of allyship. We reflected on the vibrant expressions of Pride events, the cultural richness of LGBTQIA+ contributions, and the personal significance of living one's truth. As the episode wove to a close, Anthony highlighted the undeniable connection between authenticity and mental well-being, leaving us with a portrait of the LGBTQIA+ community's journey—a journey where visibility is not just celebrated but is fundamental to the quest for true equality.
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Speaker 2:Yes and hello. Welcome along to another of the Vita Health Group podcasts. So much for joining us. I'm Glenn Thompson and it's my job to host this series of podcasts. Along with a variety of guests and experts from Vita, we delve into all sorts of everyday life challenges, but with a special focus on mental and physical health and well-being, depression, stress, injury and recovery, and a whole lot more. Today's subject and talking point is men's mental health and pride. Of course, pride Month, june, coming up, and of course, to discuss this, we welcome from Vita, anthony Kilty. Anthony, who's on the whirl? How do we find you, anthony?
Speaker 3:Hi, pleasure to meet you, Glenn. Yes, I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Great Are I sure you're very much part of the Vita family. Tell us what you do there.
Speaker 3:That's correct. Okay, so my role within Vita Health Group is I am the NHS Business Intelligence and Information Lead for Transformation Services, which is a very long title, but essentially what it means is I deal with anything relating to systems, data, KPIs and performance within any chess contracts.
Speaker 2:And the great thing is, you can do all this from home, can't you? You were telling me before we started the podcast. You have the joy of working from your laptop.
Speaker 3:Yes, I've been here since 2019 and I work entirely remote. All of my job involves the computer, so as long as the computer works, I can work.
Speaker 2:Okay, and how long have you been with Vita, then, and do you enjoy the job?
Speaker 3:first of all, yes, I thoroughly enjoy it, so I've been working here since 2019. Yes, it's a great place to work. It definitely aligns with my type of personality and skill set.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's talk about today's subject then, and, as I mentioned at the top, there we're discussing men's mental health and pride. Of course, June very much Pride Month. You're an openly gay man and you grew up as a Section 28 child. Now tell us what that means.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course. So for those that might not know, section 28 was a legislation that was passed in the 90s, which meant that basically within education and in schools, you were unable to educate and teach people about LGBT education. So I spent a lot of my well all of my primary and secondary school life in education that was tailored not so much around growing up as an LGBT male, whereas nowadays you obviously thankfully have schools and education systems where they will identify people who are LGBTQIA. Plus, we didn't necessarily have that education growing up myself, which kind of, then, leads to a different perspective on how you then are able to basically express yourself after education.
Speaker 2:And how did you find that? Growing up in that time, if you like, did you feel almost suppressed and I would say so.
Speaker 3:So growing up, obviously, adolescents and those early growing years are very important for individuals in terms of development, and I would go to you know sexual education classes, and it's only about men and women. I would watch a load of films and TV shows where it's men and women and it very much catered to a world where, being an individual who identified as LGBT, I never openly saw that in a safe space. So, therefore, everything that I felt and everything that I discovered about myself were more behind closed doors that I had to research myself, and it was never something that I could reach out to in terms of education wise.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're in a society now, in 2022, and I'm sure you'll agree with this where it's a lot more accepted, isn't it now? And everybody's come out a lot quicker. They're a lot more open about the way they are sexually and in their life. You must welcome that big time.
Speaker 3:I would say I think we have a long way. Only recently has it been deemed appropriate for someone within the Premiership Football to identify themselves as part of the LGBT community. I think we have done a lot more in schools, a lot more in education systems. However, there is still a long way to go, both in the Western and Eastern nations of the world where it truly is able to be accepted to just be who you are, but definitely a better progression than we have had in previous decades.
Speaker 2:How much further? Then you say that we've got a long way to go, and where should we be going with this?
Speaker 3:I think personally, we still have stories and news incidents where people are announcing their sexuality as they coming out and as a revelation and it has to be announced. I think there are still areas of the world where I have been personally being on holiday, where I have to be told by tour representatives to not essentially be entirely who I am because it's not accepted that way.
Speaker 3:But I think when we get to a stage where we can not have stories of people expressing themselves, as who they are to be a focal point where people just are who they are and it's really irrelevant to the story and if I can go to a country where I can just go on holiday without a fear of any criminal acts because, of just being myself. I think that would be where I'd like to be in terms of further to go.
Speaker 2:I mean, let's take the example of Jake Daniels, who became the first UK male footballer to come out as gay since 1990. Blackball Forward describes a massive relief after his statement to the news that shouldn't be a news item. I was talking only to my partner, my wife, about this when this popped up on the news and I said to this shouldn't be a news story, this should be just accepted. It's ridiculous that this is making headlines, isn't it?
Speaker 3:I would agree, and as little as I know about sports, I'm pretty sure a person's sexuality doesn't define if they can kick a ball or not. So I think, generally speaking, it really shouldn't have been. The issue we then have is, by having the bravery to speak out and obviously coming out in that fashion, you then worry that there are some areas of society that will use that to mock and to judge if he doesn't do so well in games, for example. So as much as it shouldn't, it should never have had to have been an announcement, because he's still a great footballer and it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Ok, let's talk about inclusivity then, within Vita Health Group. I mean, how have you found that in terms of equality and diversity?
Speaker 3:I think that Vita Health Group is extremely LGBTQIA plus positive and inclusive and diverse as a company as a whole. We have recently introduced being able to specify pronouns in email signatures. We are much more open in terms of having groups for various areas, such as BAME, such as LGBTQIA plus, such as women-based groups. I think the company is doing a lot to ensure that inclusivity and diversity is now a part of the overall structure of the company.
Speaker 2:You recently wrote an article about allyship within LGBT. I'd like you to expand, if you can, on what allyship is and why is it so important.
Speaker 3:Being an ally to the LGBTQIA plus community means that you may not particularly maybe identify yourself as part of that community, but you strongly believe in equality, in inclusivity for those individuals and to basically respect their sexuality and their sexual preferences. I think in the workplace it's extremely important to have allies, because for LGBTQIA plus individuals who have maybe had to hide who they are in certain workplaces and who are worried about how they are perceived, to know that there are allies in the organisation that essentially take them basically for who they are and have full support in terms of their preferences, I think it makes it easier to do your job and gives more focus based on the job and not worrying about pretending to be something that you're not.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. And with June being Pride Month and, of course, all the resume taz that goes with it, what does Pride Month mean for you specifically?
Speaker 3:Well, pride Month for me has evolved over the years, because I'm 36 years in my pride now and it's about celebrating the fact that we can be essentially who we are, that we can have, you know, lgbtqis plus culture out in the world without having to hide it as per that section 28 discussion earlier, to be able to basically feel that you can be 100% who you are and have people who are the same. So you meet people from other backgrounds who also have the same preferences as yourself and you just start to realise that you're not the only individual in this world who feels like that. The whole country, the whole nation, they all celebrate the same thing about diversity, about inclusion and basically about you being true to who you are.
Speaker 2:And Pride is great, isn't it? I don't live that far from Brighton down on the South Coast, and of course it's a huge event in Brighton. But I mean, which events do you tend to go to Locally, to where you live?
Speaker 3:More locally to where I live. So there will be Liverpool, manchester, the usual, and sometimes I've been to Birmingham or Leeds. They are also quite good as well. I really would like to go to Brighton. I think I'm hoping to go to Brighton at some stage. But sometimes it's not even about the Pride parades themselves. It can also be about the culture and the films, and there's a lot of LGBTQIA, plus literature and art and films that you don't see on mainstream, because unfortunately it's still not mainstream to always feel like that. You have seen many off-com complaints about certain series where there'll be a case or some sort of romantic involving two same sex individuals, but there's a lot of culture, a lot of history out there, and Pride is a way to celebrate it. Get it out there for more public consumption and expose the world to a lot more of that culture.
Speaker 2:I mean, you see it covered in the news, don't you? Particularly the Brighton ones and the ones in London, and you say the big conurbations, the cities, and they always look like they're having a great time, great fun, a lot of jollity going on, isn't there?
Speaker 3:There's a lot of jollity, but it comes from. It comes from a history where that was not allowed to be. So much respect to the older LGBTQI plus generations out there who struggled a lot more when it comes to expressing themselves when it was a lot more feared to publicly be out. In that respect, nowadays, in our generations, we're able to be out and celebrate. But back in not that long ago, few decades past.
Speaker 3:It was illegal and it was a mental health issue or it was something to not necessarily shout from the rafters about. So I think people have just had decades and decades of repression and suppression. So now it's the case of now. We can do it. Let's get out there and celebrate who we are.
Speaker 2:And what challenges do you feel the LGBTQ plus community face, especially when it comes to the line of work that you're involved in?
Speaker 3:I think sometimes, depending on individual circumstances, you can find the sometimes you have to, or you feel like you have to pretend to be something or not, and then you're starting to build a wall and a personality that's like, ok, I need to work in this environment, which means I need to act A, B and C, and sometimes having to do that takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of emotion and then it distracts or takes focus away from your actually ability to do the job.
Speaker 3:Bearing in mind, there are a lot of people from possibly my era or my generation where we get so used to having to be a second person because we've had to grow up in a situation where we had to pretend to be forward, facing a certain way and we had to hide exactly our true self. So for some people, we can put on a different persona very well, but is that persona right for the position? You should be hired for the position because you are good at what you do and you are the right personality, your values aligned with the company, not what do you want to be perceived as? And I think some people who grow up LGBTQIA plus sometimes worry if I'm my true self, with my true personality. Is that going to be looked at differently?
Speaker 2:As you mentioned briefly there, and I'll just pick you up on that if I can answer a number of years ago, you know, you admitted that you're almost living two separate lives. You were behaving in a way that you thought your peers wanted you to be, but secretly you were you're openly gay. I mean, that must have been so hard for you and for thousands, millions of other people probably living the same sort of life.
Speaker 3:I would definitely say so.
Speaker 3:I think the different persona was still very much myself, but it was very much more based on the world around me, what was more perceptive.
Speaker 3:So, personally, I went to an all boys Roman Catholic school for high school. So very sport orientated, very religious orientated my personal preferences were not necessarily aligned to those things. However, you have to perceive that way, because if you're not perceived that way, you're openly being perceived as different and then you allow yourself to then be openly different in a world that is not quite ready for that level of openness. So for myself, personally, I was always a bit of a nerd and a geek. I was always into IT and computers etc. So I very much leaned into that and I very much grew up as being the geek of the group and the nerd, because that was more easily perceived and easily welcomed as being someone as an IT geek than it would have been if it was more to do about my sexual preferences. So people learn to kind of get themselves in, bury themselves into more veneesh and try to learn things that they're not really wanting to learn, but it's more acceptable.
Speaker 2:And what about being LGBT? How has that shaped you into the person you are today, then, Ed?
Speaker 3:I think for myself, it's allowed me to be more open and inclusive and understanding to others.
Speaker 3:I think when you have grown up being, I want to say, a minority, but what I mean to say is in a majority of where I worked, I've always been like the minority in terms of my LGBTQIA status.
Speaker 3:When I was in high school, I was one or two people who identified in a sea of people who didn't identify, and I think, being able to express myself more within Vita, what it's allowed me to do is allow me to be more expressive, allow me to utilize all of my skill sets, including my personal approach, including my ability to really work with everyone and, I think as well knowing what it's like to be bullied and teased and mocked for being who you are. It allows you to be more empathetic in terms of understanding how mental health can affect people because, like the statistics say, a lot of people who grow up LGBTQIA plus have some severe mental health issues growing up or some mental health issues growing up not everyone, but I certainly did in my respect and it makes you a bit more empathetic to helping others who are going through the same thing, regardless of their sexual preferences.
Speaker 2:Were you bullied at school?
Speaker 3:Yes, every so often. Yes, there's only so much. You could be the IT geek before they want to do it as other things. And being so different and being in all boys' school as well, where you get the teasing and the tattling, etc. There were instances where I was bullied for being who I was and you just kind of growing up, you learn to deal with it by putting up that wall and putting on that extra facade. So that's how I dealt with it anyway. And then once I went into the working world, I presented to the working world as who I was and I said you're either going to take me as me or not going to get the job. And thankfully, everywhere I've gone, they've accepted me as me regardless.
Speaker 2:You actually say that at interview, do you?
Speaker 3:What I do at interview is I always make sure that they are aware of my LGBTQIA status. I always make sure that I'm aware of giving my pronouns to them and also I'm aware that when I do interviews, I'm very personal. I'm very just myself. I don't try to be there. What do they want me to be?
Speaker 2:That's so nice to hear. That's so refreshing to hear yourself. That's great.
Speaker 3:I think so because if I don't get the job, at least I can say well, they didn't like me. If I pretend to be something I'm not and I don't get the job, then there's always that worry of well, if I had of being me, would I have been successful? At least this way am I going to get a job or not.
Speaker 2:Interesting piece I picked up from the Vita News letter, and that is that 68% of LGBT plus young people say their mental health got worse since the coronavirus pandemic, compared to 49% of their non-LGBT plus peers. Why do you think that was?
Speaker 3:Okay. So personally, this could come from a few different aspects. One of the aspects that it may come from is depending on certain individuals who identify as LGBTQIA plus. Their family life or their home life or where they are living may not necessarily be as inclusive to their preferences as they would like, and it may be that they get their releases, it were, for being themselves by being in the work environment or being with friends or being outside of their home life. Not being able to do that and being remaining at home may regress them into a stage where they're suppressing who they are more.
Speaker 3:It may be not as a safe environment, because maybe they are safer when they are out, but they are working when they are with people. The other thing to consider as well is certainly for a lot of my friends who identify as LGBTQI plus. We are individuals of social. We are social, we like to be out, we like to mix with people, we like to be out there, and by not doing so and being more solitary, sometimes it's easy to ruminate and think about past situations and you start to feel a bit more restricted, and that can all go back to old ways of you know how it used to be putting on a second facade or not being able to go out and fully express who you are, or not being able to socialize with the people who make you feel safe.
Speaker 3:So I think that's probably a contributing factor.
Speaker 2:And it's true to say, isn't it, that if you can let somebody be their true self and more accepted in the workplace, they end up being far more productive as a result, don't they?
Speaker 3:I would say so certainly and for anyone. Really everyone needs to be who they are when they're working, because if they're not, it's going to fall down the line somewhere and it's energy being spent on building a persona that could be spent on doing the necessary work to make the world a better place.
Speaker 2:Lovely Well. Thanks, ant. It's been great to talk to you just before we finish today. If somebody is still feeling and listening to this and they're still feeling to themselves well, I'm leading this double life. I don't want to lead this double life. I haven't really come out yet. It's still an issue for me. What would your advice be?
Speaker 3:I would say to that individual that there are helplines out there. There are safe spaces, safe charities where you can get support on how you can come out to friends and family. There are articles and websites out there that will help you gain the strength that you feel that you may need to do that. I would say that if you feel you're living a double life, it's very important to try to focus on who you are, because you cannot live a double life forever. That energy will bring you down and will cause your mental health to get worse. So if you're feeling like that and you still don't feel you're in a safe space or comfortable to do so, please reach out to an independent, anonymous charity. Please reach out to a helpline and try to get the support that you need, and there are people around who will support you and who will care for you and, not to quote the old adage that has been used in these circumstances, but it really does get better when you start to really live your true life and your true self.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well said, and of course, vita can offer help in this direction as well, can't they?
Speaker 3:Yes, we have lots of independent CBT therapists and counsellors. If you are an employee of Vita, we have an LGBTQIA plus group. There's also Freedom to Speak Up champions. If you feel that you are in the workplace and you're not being treated right because of your sexual preferences, there are Freedom to Speak Up guardians, so please seek out the help that is there for you.
Speaker 2:Been a fascinating conversation and thanks so much. Men. Just generally mental health and pride. I've got to ask you quickly, before you disappear today and when you go to Pride in June are you sort of dressed up? Are you multicoloured? I mean, how do you go dressed?
Speaker 3:I always try to go for a costume. It never works, so I just go with myself and have some sort of pride. Colours in some format Excellent.
Speaker 2:All right, anthony Kilty, business Intelligence Lead for Transformation Services at Vita Health Group. It's been lovely talking to you. Thanks for your time today. Thank you very much, glen.