About Us

John Roe Jr and Mike Estep

My name is Mike Estep. I'm a husband, a proud father of four, and the founder of MENd The Stigma-a movement and upcoming podcast dedicated to breaking the silence around men's mental health. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland, and for over 30 years, I carried a secret I never should have had to carry, after being sexually abused at the age of 6 by my mother's boyfriend. Like too many men, I buried the pain, wore a mask, and stayed silent. For decades, I suffered in isolation, angry, ashamed, and feeling like I had nowhere to go. But five months ago, something changed. With the support of my incredible wife and a renewed faith in God, I began the hardest and most important work of my life–facing the truth, healing from trauma, and finally learning to speak. Now, I'm using my voice to help others find theirs.

MENd The Stigma launches May 1, 2025, as a podcast and platform for honest conversations with real men-survivors, fighters, brothers, and fathers-who are done pretending everything's fine. This isn't therapy. It's brotherhood. It's true. It's time. The statistics are haunting, but they're not the end of our story. I believe every man deserves the strength, space, and support to open up, heal, and stay with us for their tomorrow.

It's time to MENd The Stigma. Together.

Hello, everyone! My Name Is John Roe Jr. I am the Co-Founder of MENd The Stigma Movement and Upcoming Podcast. As a Husband, Fur Dad, Son, Brother, Friend, I am looking to share my story of how I continue to deal with Anxiety, Depression, Self-Worth, amongst many other stigmas with MEN's Mental Health. Growing up, I watched my father struggle with alcoholism, and growing up hearing things such as "Man Up", "Be Strong", "Suffer in Silence", really took its toll on me, not realizing what it was doing to my Mental Health. What I didn't understand was that emotional bottling, constantly feeling like a failure, refusing to ask for help or talk about it, eventually led to anger, irritability, lack of focus, sleep, constant headaches, anxiety, depression, suicide, and worrying about everything. Telling myself that "I'm Fine", became the norm for me, and Isolation, Substance abuse, Alcohol became Numbing/Coping mechanisms just to get through the day. This sent me into a deep depression, and it wasn't until meeting my wife that I began to talk about it and understand, instead of keeping everything inside and virtually self-destructing to work on MENding the problem. I began to work on myself and start the journey that I'm still on today to work on Healing, communicating, Vulnerability, Personal Health, Confidence, Sobriety, Therapy, and becoming the best version of myself. Now we are embarking on this journey to bring awareness to how serious of a stigma MENs Mental health is. We want to raise Mental health awareness to everyone we can. We hope to help everybody understand "It's okay, to not be okay" and inspire others who struggle to give them hope, strength, and let them know that they are not alone, and their Story Matters! Together we can #MENdthestigma.