Meet the 'Dutch Forrest Gump' who's walking barefoot across America to raise awareness for men's mental health

Anton Nootenboom, known to many on social media as "The Barefoot Dutchman," isn’t your typical record holder.

In 2019, he became the first and only person to make the 80-mile round-trip hike to Mount Everest Base Camp without shoes. Two years later, he set the 2021 Guinness World Record for the longest barefoot journey after hiking 1,875 miles on the Australian coast. Now he plans to break that record by walking 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to New York City, entirely barefoot.

“It sounds crazy,” Nootenboom told Yahoo News on day six of his eight-month journey, which began on Feb. 17. He even referred to himself as the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump’ when 30-plus people joined him on the first mile of his trek in Santa Monica, Calif. The walk is an extension of the #BraveMenTalk campaign, in partnership with Barebarics barefoot shoes, which calls attention to male mental health globally and raises funds for charities.

For Nootenboom, who served in the Dutch army for 10 years and completed three tours in the Middle East, it’s symbolic of the psychological battles many men face in silence.

“The roads are tough and every day is full of surprises,” he said. “I tell myself, ‘It’s just a phase. This road will end, and someday the road will be a little better.’ It’s the same in life: When things get tough, it’s never the end. It’s just a bit of a stretch, and eventually you come out of it. I have wounds on my feet, and they hurt, but I know the skin will grow back tougher than it was before. That’s what gives me hope.”

‘The pain is worth it for me.’

As he crosses the deserts, mountains and valleys of America to reach the Big Apple, Nootenboom will stop in various cities to bring educational tools and resources to local communities. He wants to empower men of all ages to “not be afraid to tell your story.”

“The pain is worth it for me,” he said of the mission. “I want this challenge to speak to men, and say, ‘Whatever life throws at you, physically and mentally, you can get through it.’”

That’s a lesson he learned the hard way himself. After leaving the army in 2015, Nootenboom fell into a deep depression and never felt comfortable talking to anyone about it. The isolation led him to nearly take his own life on the edge of a cliff in Australia, where he was living at the time. The incident became a wake-up call for him to seek help.

“Being raised by the army to say, ‘Don't cry, man up!’ I didn't feel safe talking about what was going on with me,” he shared. “With a lot of resistance, I took the offer of getting help and doing things way out of my comfort zone,” which included therapy and meditation practices.

Nootenboom isn’t alone. Data from Mental Health America shows that over 6 million men suffer from depression each year, and most go untreated. That has grave consequences. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is nearly four times more prevalent in men than women — with 39,255 male suicides in 2022, compared to 9,825 among women the same year.

Experts tell Yahoo News that men with depression go largely underreported due to various stigmas and cultural norms that discourage them from seeking help.

“Men are socialized to not show their emotions, and the only acceptable emotions include anger and frustration,” said Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, psychologist for the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. “This makes it challenging for men to openly talk about their feelings out of fear that they are not strong or that something is wrong with them.”

He added: “If we encourage other men to speak about their mental health, this will validate and normalize that mental health is a part of everyone’s lives, including men.”

Nicholas Balaisis, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, applauds Nootenboom for using physical activity as a way into the discussion.

“Men often like to help with solvable problems, [but] mental health issues are not as easily solvable,” Balaisis explained, noting that long-distance running can be seen as a metaphor for the trials and tribulations we all have. That provides a template for men to talk more deeply about their “interior life.”

“Men in particular need to develop a relation to their own interiority — thoughts about themselves, impressions from relationships, hopes, dreams, regrets,” he said. “This happens best with others.”

The Dutch ‘Forrest Gump’

“After I went through some healing, I learned that I wasn’t alone in my feelings,” said Nootenboom. “If there's something I learned in the army, it's to lead by example. I wanted to share my own story in the hopes that it creates a safe space for others to be like, ‘Hey, if you can do it, then I can do it.’”

During the day, Nootenboom walks barefoot with a trolley cart nicknamed “Bubba,” a nod to a character in the 1994 film Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks about a man who develops a cult following for running across the country. At night, he sleeps in one of two campers, both driven by the campaign’s producers who are following his trail across America.

Similar to his record-setting Australian hike in 2021, he expects more people to join him as the journey progresses.

“At some point, this will catch momentum and more people will start looking for where I'm at and will join me for the walk,” he said. “I've no doubt there's going to be a long stretch of road where it's with a bunch of people. I’ll be like the 'Dutch Forrest Gump!’”

Nootenboom chooses to “only look forward,” despite the hills and valleys ahead. Even when it feels impossible, he hopes to inspire others to never “give up when there are obstacles in your path.”

“I’m looking at a mountain with snowy peaks, and I know I'm walking around those. At some point, I'm going to the Rocky Mountains and I’ll have to face them too,” he explained. “It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be challenging, but at the end of the day, you’re one day closer to reaching your target.”

Follow Nootenboom’s (and Bubba’s) progress at #BraveMenTalk.