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More and more men are struggling with mental illness, which means more and more are struggling to talk about it. Though it doesn’t apply to all men, so many men avoid talking about what’s going on inside their minds out of fear of being judged or ignored – or told to ‘man up’.

And so, to encourage men to speak out about their mental health and seek help, Metro spoke to 20 different men about mental illness. They told Metro what they live with, how it affects them and the one thing they wish others knew about men’s mental health – in hopes it’ll encourage more men suffering in silence to seek help.

Ash, 27, has been diagnosed with depression and anxiety

Ash says anxiety and depression can be ‘debilitating’, and affects things like his motivation, nutrition and relationships. He also suffers from panic attacks.

“The main thing I wish everyone knew about mental health is that everyone’s mental health is important and fragile, and it’s okay if you don’t have complete control of it, you can still lead a normal life as a fully functioning member of society. And for those who come across those with mental health difficulties, don’t be so quick to turn away from them. It’s scary enough dealing with it on your own, sometimes having someone that understands is what it takes to make it through the day. And if you do know someone close to you that’s suffering, please check up on them from time to time. Even if they don’t open up, just knowing that someone is willing to be there for them will make a difference.”

Sean, 36, who is from the US, has been diagnosed with ADHD

“I truly wish people understood that there is no quick fix to mental issues, that it depends on the area you seek out help, the state, etc. I have a nephew that has been misdiagnosed 5 times in New York City, and there is no support network here for preventative diagnosis. We’re either utterly broken or perfectly fine in the eyes of the state.”

Brendan, 34, says the one thing he wish others knew about mental health is how weak it has made him feel due to the stigma around mental illness

“I was always told to ‘man up’, ‘grow a pair’ or ‘get over it’. I guess that’s all part and parcel of people not realising that mental health is a real illness, not an attitude. It’s universal for men and women but as a boy I was told to be tough and not vulnerable. Letting go of that mindset and acknowledging I had a problem that needed to be talked about was vitally important. Life saving even. I think people really need to understand. The ‘manliest’ moment in my life didn’t happen when I was ever displaying how tough I was, it happened when I opened up about how fragile I always am. That. That was real bravery. Admitting you’re not strong is the strongest you’ll ever feel. Not necessarily at first, but you soon realise. You’ve never been more of a ‘man’.”

TJ, 24, who lives with anxiety, says it often causes him to ‘overthink, second guess’ himself and ‘panic’ 

“It affects me mentally and physically. It’s part of me. It may take me longer to do things, it may make me react better to certain situations than the average person. But it’s not all I am. I’m multifaceted. I have hopes and fears. I enjoy things and despise things. I love and fear things in my own personal way, like everyone else does.”

Duncan, 29, has ‘moderate anxiety and depression’

His diagnoses cause him to have bi-weekly panic attacks and low self image, which causes him to over-eat. He has difficulties maintaining relationships. 

He wishes others knew that “so much of the struggle comes down to isolation. Something that makes a surprising difference is creating informal, friendly environments for checking in and sharing stories; for example, I co-host a YouTube/Twitch show called Broverwatch, where we sit down with a guest to catch up and have a chat about a mental health issue while playing a video game together – but this could also be the pub after football, or a book club, or even a group chat.”

Dan, 34, who has major depression, says he wants people to know that his mental health doesn’t define him

“I used to call myself a depressive. It was an easy way to explain myself. A short cut. But it only shortchanged me, in the long run. It was another barrier I put in the way to stop people getting to know me. I don’t say that anymore, because I am not my depression. I realised that by defining myself by my illness I was limiting my own recovery, and my growth. These associations aren’t always meant as a negative. I’m a writer, and I find the romanticised way people link mental health and creativity to be very reductive. A creative outlet like writing has been instrumental in helping me navigate depressive episodes, or to make sense of my thoughts and feelings. But depression doesn’t make me a better writer. It has taken years of practice and failure to get to this point (my debut novel, Johnny Ruin, is released in the UK on March 22). Saying I owe my creativity to my mental health takes away all that hard work. Depression is not a superpower.”

Ian, 53, was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety and has suicidal tendencies which are linked to PTSD

Though he has learned to cope with his illness, he says some days are better than others.

“The one thing I wish people knew about mental health is that you are not alone and it is okay to not be okay. You are not alone.”

Peter, 28, who has bipolar disorder, says the mood disorder affects him in all sorts of ways If he’s depressed, he finds it difficult to go to the gym or even prepare food

He feels it really affects him physically. The main thing he wishes others knew about mental illness is that it’s not something they’re “somehow smarter than”.

“There are all sorts of bizarre things mental illness can make you do; but it’s happening to your brain and thinking you’re bigger than that and able to see through what’s going on can end up exacerbating the whole situation. ‘Swallow your pride and get help from a trained mental health professional.”

Jamie, 31, has anxiety and depression

He adds that his anxiety and depression can also affect him physically, making it tough to do his job at times, or even get out of bed.

“I guess the number one thing I’d like to make clear is that there’s no easy quick fix, no diet that can just cure a person, no regimen of medications that’ll work for everyone across the board. It’s a lengthy and deeply personal process. Basically: please stop sending me articles about cutting out gluten.”

Stephen, 27, who has an anxiety disorder

He wishes people knew ‘just how things can truly affect’ men living with mental illness.

“For example, social media has some people thinking mental health is a one type of thing. How words can effect someone and really hurt, which is why we should always treat each other with kindness. In America, mental health is not taken as seriously as it needs to be. People need to learn and educate themselves on the signs.”

Sebastian, 25, lives with borderline personality disorder

His BPD affects the way he interacts with people. He says he feels his emotions more intensely than the average person which can affect his relationships. He has extreme reactions to abandonment and suffers with anxiety attacks, which have in the past lead him to self harm. Sebastian wishes people were more educated on BPD and what people who live with it go through. ‘So many of BPD traits are demonised by people as we’re ‘just clingy’ or ‘abusive’ based on 1 or 2 extreme high profile examples, instead of listening to us. ‘Our attachment issues are often used against us but we rarely see sympathy as people hear one story of someone writing a letter in blood to their boyfriend or something and think that’s all of us, instead of listening to us. ‘Also on a personal note: I kinda wish people knew that men can suffer from BPD too? I think its percieved as a feminine disorder for some reason and people seem shocked when I tell them I have it!’

David, 55, lives with schizophrenia

David says his schizophrenia can be distracting and incredibly disturbing. “Mental illness is actually very painful, and uncomfortable.”

Steve, 35, has anxiety

“I wish more people realised how much men are pressures to be “strong” and emotions are labelled as weakness… and that negatively effects men’s health, and their willingness to seek treatment.”

Antonio, 29, who also lives with anxiety, adds that he wishes others knew that when it comes to mental health, everyone is ‘different’

“Mental health problems affect people in different ways and equally there are no ‘one size fits all’ treatments. What might work for some people won’t necessarily work for me.”

Tom, 33, who has social anxiety, which makes him feel he’s ‘not good enough’

“I’ve also never felt that people care about me – I like to keep in touch with my friends on a semi regular basis & then don’t hear back from them but see that they are commenting or liking other things on social media.”

“When I do meet someone who is different, I naturally then tend to gravitate toward that person and then get really anxious that I’m going to do or say something that pushes them away. Then end up going into a tailspin. It affects me on a weekly basis because I regularly get upset when I don’t hear from people, thinking I’ve done wrong and/or feeling like they don’t care enough to respond.  The one thing I wish people would understand and appreciate about anyone’s mental health is that although everyone’s is different, one message can change someone’s life. Even if someone didn’t have the time – just a quick reply to say ‘everything’s ok, will reply as soon as I can’ will make all the difference. ‘Contact out of the blue as well – instead of me always being the first one to get in touch. It’ll make me feel like I’m cared about and start giving me more confidence in other areas of my life.”

Kevin, 35, has anxiety and depression, which when they’re at their worst makes him very ‘antisocial, reclusive and paranoid’

“The one thing I would really wish others new about mental health is that people deal with mental health in different ways, responding how people would not expect doesn’t always mean the issue has gone or I am fine. People with long term mental health become good at hiding it from people,” he said.

Matt, 26, who also has depression and anxiety

“It makes simple tasks difficult, makes talking to people even more difficult. Makes life a total and complete struggle in every way you can think of.”

Read more on Metro.co.uk.

Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 20, flooding neighborhoods and villages and cutting power to 3.4 million people. More than four months later, much of the island is still in shock.

A recent visit to a suicide prevention center shows the long-term toll on mental health in a place struck by an overwhelming impression that the rest of the world has moved on.

Background reading and viewing:

• Hurricane Maria’s violent winds and screeching rains terrified the island for 72 hours, and public health officials say much of the population shows signs of post-traumatic stress.
• In this mini-documentary, Ms. Dickerson speaks with counselors who are fielding calls at the suicide prevention center.

Listen to ‘The Daily’ audiocast about Puerto Rico’s mental health crisis following Hurricane Maria on NYTimes.com.

Teenagers who use e-cigarettes expose themselves to cancer-causing toxins, particularly if they choose fruit-flavored products, a new study reports.

Urine tests revealed elevated levels of five different toxins in the bodies of teens who use e-cigarettes (often called vaping). And all of the toxins are known or suspected carcinogens, said lead researcher Dr. Mark Rubinstein, a professor of pediatrics with the University of California, San Francisco.

Teens who used e-cigarettes had up to three times greater amounts of the toxins in their urine than teens who never vape, the researchers found.

“One of the reasons why more teens are using these products is they feel that they are safe and/or safer than smoking,” Rubinstein said. “Based on these results, if the teenagers kept using these products over the years, we believe it could be dangerous.”

The toxins — acrolein, acrylamide, acrylonitrile, crotonaldehyde and propylene oxide — all belong to a class of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

In particular, fruit-flavored e-cigarettes produced significantly higher levels of acrylonitrile. That’s a concern because fruit flavors are most popular among teens and acrylonitrile is a known carcinogen, the researchers said.

“Right now a lot of the flavors being marketed seem to clearly be targeting teens,” Rubenstein said. “I think it’s difficult to argue that you’re marketing these products to adults trying to wean off cigarettes when you’re offering flavors like ‘unicorn poop’ and bubble gum.”

Volatile organic compounds are released when e-cigarette liquid is heated to the point when it becomes vapor, Rubinstein said. The liquid contains solvents that are approved food additives, but when heated these additives can form other chemical compounds, including VOCs, he said.

Toxic VOCs also are present in traditional tobacco cigarettes, and in greater quantities. The researchers behind the new study said “dual users” — teens who alternate between cigarette smoking and e-cigarette smoking — had up to three times higher levels of five toxins than those who only vape.

Gregory Conley is president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit that advocates for e-cigarettes. He said: “The results of this study fall in line with prior literature estimating the cancer risk from e-cigarette use to be orders of magnitude lower than the risk from smoking cigarettes. While it is clear from the data that environmental sources of toxins played a considerable role in the levels measured among all groups, the data nonetheless shows significant reductions in exposure among exclusive e-cigarette users.”

But to Dr. Norman Edelman, senior scientific advisor to the American Lung Association, the study results show that e-cigarettes aren’t as harmless as some might think. “Now, it’s true that if they smoked combustible cigarettes they would get more of this stuff,” Edelman said. “But this does make it quite clear that vaping is not safe.”

To investigate chemical exposure from e-cigarettes, the researchers looked at three different groups — e-cigarette users, “dual users” who also smoke traditional cigarettes, and teens who don’t smoke or vape. The researchers recruited 103 participants with an average age of 16, and analyzed urine samples from all for the presence of potentially dangerous volatile organic compounds.

“They’re doing it the right way. They’re not measuring what’s in the vaped liquid, they’re measuring what gets into the kids’ bodies, which is really the important question,” Edelman said.

All e-cigarettes appear to create VOCs, even those that don’t contain nicotine. The VOCs acrylonitrile and acrylamide were found in elevated levels in the urine of teens who said they don’t use nicotine-laced e-liquid.

“That was interesting and surprising to us,” Rubinstein said. “Although most of the teenagers used the nicotine-containing products, some did not and we were able to find these toxins even in them. That’s because the solvents are still in these products, even if there’s no nicotine.”

Edelman said the study exposes the erroneous assumption that because e-cigarettes are “more safe” than tobacco, they can serve as a substitute for quitting smoking altogether.

“The most safe approach is smoking cessation, and for kids the most safe approach is smoking prevention,” Edelman said. “What I’m concerned about is that all this talk about ‘more safe’ under the rubric of harm reduction is going to make us forget about the importance of smoking prevention and smoking cessation.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to step up regulation of e-cigarettes, particularly when it comes to teenage use and fruit-flavored products that appear to target teens, Rubinstein said.

“I definitely think there needs to be greater regulation to prevent teenagers from using these products,” Rubinstein concluded.

Read more on Health.USNews.com

Writing about upsetting experiences can improve both mental and physical health, researchers have found.

Studies show that people who hold in major secrets are more likely to have health problems compared to those who do not. This is what led University of Texas (UT) psychiatry professor James Pennebaker to explore expressive, or therapeutic, writing as a solution for dealing with trauma in the 1980s. He thought writing might be better than talking because it would allow people to be honest about their experiences without worrying about what others thought.

Over the course of two decades, there have been 200 published studies on expressive writing, according to an article in the Independent Practitioner from 2010. The Pennebaker Language Lab, which published the first study on expressive writing in 1986, held writing sessions in a laboratory setting where participants would come in to write about upsetting experiences. The writing exercises lasted 15 minutes each day for three or four days. Afterward, the lab tracked the health records of the participants. In one study, participants who wrote about their traumatic experiences went to the health center at about half the rate of the control group, Pennebaker said.

But the benefits are not associated only with physical health.

“People after writing, if they had lost their jobs, were more likely to get jobs again more quickly, probably because they resolve (their) issues,” Pennebaker said. “People who write about upsetting experiences sleep better and make better grades.”

Ryan Boyd, psychology postdoctoral fellow, said he saw similar results in his work with UT psychiatry professor Cindy Meston on expressive writing for victims of childhood sexual abuse. Study participants were asked to write about their sexual experiences over the course of several sessions. Boyd, who also works with Pennebaker, uses linguistic tools such as the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to categorize words people use into different clusters such as positive emotion words, social words and pronouns. These patterns help identify different psychological phenomena.

Text analysis revealed the initial language patterns of the sexual abuse victims to be typical of depression and insecurity, Boyd said. But over the course of the study, a change happened.

“Their language came to look more and more like the group that had never been abused,” Boyd said. “The language seemed like it was less depressed, less hypersexual. So, it seemed to be the case that as they were writing about this and kind of working through this in their heads, they start to think about it more and more like an average healthy adult who has never been abused.”

Pennebaker advised students to utilize expressive writing as a tool whenever something is plaguing them or causing them to lose sleep, especially if they don’t feel comfortable talking about it with others.

“Explore your deepest thoughts and feelings in your writing,” Pennebaker said. “Tie it into other things in your life. Did something like this happen in the past? Is it related to your parents, to your family, to your feelings about yourself? Is it associated with school, or who you’d like to be in the future or who you have been in the past? This writing is for you and you alone, so be brutally honest in terms of what’s going on.”

Read more on DailyTexanOnline.com.

Marvel’s Black Panther is a cultural phenomenon, a historic box office success that’s brought in rave reviews and sparked conversation all over social media and traditional media alike. There are no signs of the excitement abating, either, as the conversation about the film has evolved from discussions about the importance of representation into something grander: a rather groundbreaking celebration of black culture.

With an all-star collection of majority black talent both in front of and behind the camera, Black Panther, under the direction of Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed), is about more than the latest superhero’s journey; it’s also about black culture’s journey, and it points toward a future where it could be the culture. It acknowledges and celebrates everything from traditional African society to African-American political debates, from the power and beauty of black women to the preservation of identity, all within the lush confines of the fictional African nation of Wakanda.

All told, Black Panther’s greatest legacy may not be what it’s done for Marvel, Hollywood, or box office records, but what it’s done for the culture. In Wakanda, which offers much to marvel at for audiences of all backgrounds, black viewers in particular have found a cultural oasis that feels like nothing we’ve seen before.

Black Panther celebrates black culture on several fronts

Black Panther is in many ways a love letter to black culture. Africa has traditionally been an unsophisticated bit player in American media, often portrayed as backward, savage, and chaotic in everything from news coverage to films. It’s a portrayal that has left little room for other interpretations, which is why Black Panther’s vision of Wakanda as a bustling metropolis of vibranium-powered futuristic skyscrapers, racing trains, and soaring spaceships feels so refreshing.

Marvel movies often take place in grand, imaginative locales, like Thor’s Asgard or Guardians of the Galaxy’s far-flung planets. But nothing has been quite as audacious and poignant as Wakanda, a vision of Africa that feels indebted to both Jack Kirby and Octavia Butler, home to a thriving black population that represents our collective ingenuity and beauty. As a testament to black empowerment, Black Panther is an important artifact, but it’s also, quite simply, a big draw for black moviegoers starved for this sort of vision.

It’s not just Wakanda’s skyline that makes an impact, though; the film drew on a team of designers and stylists to showcase a very specific, beautiful black aesthetic. In an interview with the New York Times, Camille Friend, who oversaw the various hair designs of what she calls “a totally Afrocentric, natural hair movie,” said the entire production was considered against a backdrop of a bigger black cultural moment: “We’re in a moment when people are feeling empowered about being black,” she says. “The hair helps communicate that.”

Like the film’s hair, Black Panther’s costuming was an opportunity to infuse meaning and pride into the movie. As the film’s head costume designer, Ruth Carter, shared with NPR, the costumes, like Wakanda itself, needed to evoke a place and people that had “never been colonized, one that looked toward the future but was based on a real past.”

Carter and her team drew on Kenyan, Namibian, and South African reference points to complete the film’s array of looks, reflecting not only the tribal diversity that exists within Wakanda but the diversity of black culture and identity as well. The film is a crucial stamp of validation for black people hungry for the opportunity to celebrate everything from Afrofuturism to the natural hair movement that’s often been derided in mainstream spaces.

The care and intricacy of the film’s styling carried a heavy price tag, with Marvel committing more money to Black Panther than its previous few films in order to achieve a visual splendor that’s as exciting to the culture as it is to the eye. The result is the sort of spectacle black moviegoers rarely get to see in popular mainstream culture. That isn’t lost on Marvel’s Kevin Feige, who explained his reasoning behind the film’s budget to Vulture: “It’s a big story that deserves to be told in a big way, for all of the cultural and political reasons that people talk about.”

These vague “cultural and political reasons” are at the heart of a movie phenomenon that’s inspired everything from Black Panther-themed watch parties to a voter registration initiative to a curriculum that encourages educators to leverage the film to teach deeper histories about African culture, politics, and history. It’s also opened up dialogues and personal reflections about black identity in America and abroad via #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe, a powerful cross section of editorial and real-time reflections on the film’s resonance with black moviegoers.

The film has also jumped into the current of black political thought and action, prompting challenging think pieces about how T’Challa and Killmonger’s rift is representative of familiar ideological debates in the black community, and what the film’s politics represent about the state of black America. In addition to escapism and inspiration, Black Panther offers African Americans the opportunity to reexamine and reimagine their place in the world, both literally and figuratively. Wakanda has emerged as a vision of what’s possible, representing what true liberation could look like, but the power of that fantasy is directly linked to the harsh realities of Erik Killmonger’s experience growing up in Oakland, California, far away from that utopic vision.

Black Panther is part of a wave of entertainment that’s expanding the scope of black narratives

The excitement around Black Panther doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the film is the latest in a string of high-water-mark moments for a black pop culture landscape that’s experiencing a renaissance. Recent years have seen a new level of black art that’s intertwined sociopolitical commentary with high-caliber artistry: from Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN to Atlanta and Queen Sugar, there’s been a renewed focus on telling stories that broaden and sharpen the range of black narratives.

This expansion is significant given black audiences’ complex relationship with Hollywood, which has typically presented a narrow slice of the African-American narrative. It’s an industry that has often seemed invested in black Americans primarily as slaves (12 Years a Slave), victims of inner-city strife (Detroit), or symbols of comfort (The Help) and is fixated on stories about the post-Reconstruction and civil rights eras and biopics of famous black people that only glimpse at race.

For a long time, it’s felt like the only stories about the African-American experience Hollywood was interested in telling were stories that were intertwined in some way with the white experience, making this shift toward stories that center black narratives as black narratives feel both welcome and long overdue.

A similar shift has been afoot in Hollywood offscreen in recent years. As #OscarsSoWhite launched a debate about the industry’s fidelity to representation and valuing nonwhite contributions, filmmakers like Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, A Wrinkle in Time’s Ava DuVernay, and Get Out’s Jordan Peele have taken crucial pole positions as visionaries who are pushing the boundaries of black representation on film. Coogler’s Black Panther joins these projects as a missing piece: a popcorn movie that uses the most mainstream of film genres — the superhero movie — to project the complexity of black identity, politics, and creativity.

Black Panther is in many ways an antidote to the black American experience in 2018

The renewed conversation around race that Black Panther enters into extends beyond the entertainment industry. As the first black superhero film in a cinematic universe that’s spent the past decade focused primarily on white superheroes, it underlines the chasm that exists between society’s treatment of black Americans and white Americans. 

In many ways, black bodies have experienced a renewed series of attacks in recent years. Black NFL players can’t kneel in protest without recrimination from team owners, or a conservative-leaning fan base. Everyday black citizens have been increasingly displaced in gentrifying cities, locked up in prisons at alarming rates, and shot and beaten by law enforcement at equally high ones.

This makes Black Panther a palate cleanser of sorts, a healthy injection of powerful, beautiful images of the black body. It’s what’s behind the lure of Wakanda, a land of black vibrancy, freedom, diversity, and discourse not blighted by outside forces or forced to negotiate with anyone but themselves. It’s why the Killmonger/T’Challa chasm rings so true, as they both offer their own type of wish fulfillment for black viewers: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a world where we aren’t encumbered by systemic racism and oppression and are masters of our own destiny? And yet wouldn’t it also be nice to galvanize a community with resources and political might to address and maybe even reverse the effects of that systemic oppression?

Told from a posture of power and pride, Black Panther is in many ways a most necessary antidote for the black American experience in 2018, an elixir that provides escape into a world where black Americans can imagine these conversations outside of the white gaze. It’s invaluable to be reminded that we still have the ability to soar and take action like T’Challa or Nakia or Okoye, to be strong black bodies of justice. The value of that reminder is not just timely — it’s timeless.

Read more on Vox.com.

The following post was written by and from the perspective of Nicole Greene, the Acting Director Office on Women’s Health and shared on the Office of Women’s Health website.

We have seen tremendous improvements in HIV treatment and prevention over the past few decades. While we want to celebrate this progress, we also need to discuss how it can lead people to falsely believe that HIV is no longer a serious health issue. People across the country — including women — continue to get and transmit HIV regardless of age, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In the United States, about one quarter of people living with HIV are women, and in 2016, women accounted for 1 in 5 HIV diagnoses.

My message is simple: HIV is still a very real problem, but it is preventable.

On March 10, we observe National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day to shed light on the impact HIV and AIDS have on women and girls. It’s also a time to remember that every single one of us has a role to play in HIV prevention — women, men, health professionals, those who are HIV-negative, and those who are HIV-positive. There are simple steps we can take to protect ourselves, our partners, and our patients from HIV infection and transmission. Here’s how:

If you’re HIV-negative:

• Get a free, confidential HIV test. Visit gettested.cdc.gov to find a testing location. Make sure you know your partner’s status, too — before you have sex.
• Practice safe sex. Use condoms every time you have sex.
• Talk to your doctor about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) if you have an HIV-positive partner. PrEP is a daily pill that can reduce your risk of getting HIV from sex by more than 90%.
• Visit a doctor right away if you think you may have been exposed to HIV. The doctor may decide that you should get post-exposure prophylaxis, also known as PEP. PEP is an anti-HIV medicine that may lower your chances of getting HIV after you have been exposed to the virus.

If you’re HIV-positive:

• Take care of your health and visit your doctor regularly.
• Aim to achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load by taking your medication as prescribed and for at least 6 months. Having an undetectable viral load means that you are much less likely to transmit HIV to a partner.
• Educate your partner about PrEP and PEP, if they are HIV-negative.

If you’re a health care professional:

• Know the HIV screening recommendations and implement them, as appropriate.
• Talk to your patients about their HIV risk and how to practice safe sex.
• Know when to recommend PrEP and PEP to HIV-negative patients.
• Work closely with HIV-positive patients to encourage them to stay healthy and help them adhere to their treatment. Also, if they’re sexually active, educate them about PrEP and PEP.

I hope you joined us this National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day — and will continue beyond — by taking steps to protect yourself and the people you love. We need you, because we all have a role to play in preventing HIV. Visit www.womenshealth.gov/nwghaad to get more ideas on what you can do to stop HIV and AIDS.

Learn more on WomensHealth.gov.