“It’s okay not to be okay. But it’s also not okay to stay not okay.”
That is the ultimatum marathon runner Donavon Shirley wants South Africans to confront.
As Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month takes centre stage, conversations around depression, anxiety, and burnout are louder than ever. Social media feeds are flooded with motivational graphics.
Corporate wellness webinars are fully booked. Celebrities openly dissect their therapy sessions.
Yet, for many men, the chasm between talking about mental health and actually doing something about it remains painfully wide.
Shirley is using one of the country’s most brutal endurance tests to bridge that gap. By running the iconic Comrades Marathon distance from Pietermaritzburg to Durban and then turning around to run all the way back, he is initiating a different kind of dialogue: one that moves past passive awareness and into radical action.
For Shirley, this double-ultra marathon is not a display of performative toxic masculinity or mere physical grit. It is a canvas for survival.
“We all find ourselves down,” Shirley tells “Independent Media Lifestyle”. “We all find ourselves emotionally drained, physically exhausted, or mentally broken at times. The real challenge is finding the courage to get back up when the road feels endless.”
In South Africa, that exhaustion is a collective reality. Navigating systemic financial stress, unemployment, relationship fractures, and grief, millions are running on empty. Mental health crises rarely announce themselves with dramatic flair.
Often, they look like a father who has quietly stopped laughing. They look like a colleague who insists he is “fine” while silently suffocating under the weight of his world.
This is where the pavement becomes a pharmacy. Research increasingly validates what athletes have known intuitively for decades.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that a structured running programme was just as effective as antidepressant medication in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression, with the added benefit of radical physical restoration.
Running stimulates a neurological cocktail of endorphins, serotonin and endocannabinoids that regulate mood and blunt stress. But Shirley notes the true breakthrough happens after the laces are untied.
“You won’t necessarily solve your life crises while running,” he admits. “But you will finish your run in a cognitive space that allows you to handle them.”
That distinction is vital. Running does not erase debt. It does not stitch a broken marriage back together. It does not cure clinical depression. What it does do is create just enough mental clearance to make a difficult phone call, book a therapy appointment, or finally ask for help.
It cuts through what Shirley calls “performative mental health culture”.
“Mental health has become a cliché,” he argues. “We are surrounded by Instagram posters telling us to ‘be kind to yourself.’ But to someone trapped in a dark room, those words offer zero comfort. The question we need to answer is, “Now what?”
Awareness without access, community or action simply breeds isolation. According to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), men account for the vast majority of suicide deaths both globally and locally, yet are the least likely to seek professional intervention.
Shirley attributes this to how men are socialised to connect.
“Women have the power of the cappuccino,” he observes. “They sit together, look each other in the eye, and instinctively share their burdens.
“Men, conversely, will spend five hours talking about sport, politics, or work without ever revealing how they are actually coping. We can spend an entire evening with a friend and never know he is drowning.”
This devastating silence is what drove Shirley to expand his advocacy. Through his involvement with the Get Back Up Challenge and NPO Matthew and Me, established after the tragic suicide of teenager Matthew Ernst, Shirley has witnessed how generational silence trickles down to the youth.
After hosting a mental health run at his club, a call from Matthew’s mother, Ashley, changed him forever.
“I realised we never truly know the invisible weights people are carrying,” Shirley reflects. “We are leaving too much parenting to digital screens. Kids don’t need algorithms; they need present adults, genuine connection, and real conversation.”
True resilience is not about pretending the storm isn’t happening; it is about refusing to navigate it alone.
“If you twist your ankle on a run, I can’t magically heal it,” Shirley says. “But I can help carry you to the doctor.”
Friends cannot cure clinical depression. Families cannot instantly delete anxiety. But they can sit quietly in a clinic waiting room. They can dial the hotline number. They can ask the terrifying, necessary questions.
As South Africa navigates Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, Shirley’s dual-running campaign challenges us to stop viewing mental wellness as a trending hashtag and start treating it as a shared human obligation.
