I write this, in the wake of Gary Speed's death, not just because of the tragedy involved, but becuase of the wider impact of depression and the seeming lack of knowledge of understanding of just how devastating depression can be.
Depressionisnt just feeling a bit down, it is as a friend of mine so unnervingly put it ( i'll come back to her later), is best desribed as a cancer of the mind. It is relentess, insidious, unrelenting and totally unchoosing of its victims. It doesnt matter if you are homeless, a nurse, a soldier, a footballer, or a multibillionare. It can manifest itself in so many ways and make no mistake it is a killer.
A few says ago, before all of this, i was reading the Secret Footballer, which featured an article which would turn out to be so tragically apt:
[h=1]The Secret Footballer: Sometimes there's darkness behind the limelight[/h] Mental illness is another of football's taboos, but attitudes are starting to change and it is not before time
The ability of football to turn life on its head with only a single blast of the referee's whistle makes it almost too easy to get carried away with the game at times. One minute everything is going well and seconds later things have never looked so bleak; sometimes that pressure is simply too much. Last week the attempt by the Bundesliga referee Babak Rafati to kill himself had pundits and commentators alike preferring to "put football into perspective" rather than ask the awkward questions that nobody wants to answer.
Many top sports people know only too well what Rafati is going through. On Friday, Stan Collymore, the former Liverpool striker, used his Twitter account to tell the world that his latest bout of depression was one of the most severe yet, prompting him to reveal that he hasn't seen daylight for four days. I certainly understand the feeling of wanting to shut yourself away from the world and when I was first diagnosed with depression in 2002 it was even more of a stigma than it is today.
Since football exploded as a global business some 20 years ago the pressure on everybody involved has become a poisoned chalice. On the one hand the rewards are vast but on the other failure, or even mediocrity, can become the barometer against which all aspects of life are measured, albeit for a minority.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying for one minute that everyone involved with the game is in a state of irreparable depression, but I do think that the majority of us feel a degree of pressure, from the thought of what the headline writers have in store for us to the fans that start work on Monday morning unsure if they'll have enough money to put fuel in their car, never mind afford another £40 ticket come Saturday.
When I started playing there was no media training or sports psychology to help you along the way; pressure was just something you had to deal with. Some players remain so anxious that they are physically sick before games, and one of my friends from the continent took to having oxygen such was his fear of underperforming.
On many occasions, I have seen players affected by what somebody has said about them on a message board or in a newspaper. Even if there are 99 positive comments, they will put all their efforts into searching for the one negative remark and, subsequently, put all their energy into worrying about it.
A player, of course, knows only too well if he has played poorly, and yet the fear of seeing a below-par performance pulled apart by a journalist remains a huge obstacle for some. I must confess that in days gone by I have refused interviews with some reporters when I've felt that the rating out of 10 given to me in their match report the previous week did not reflect my true contribution. As I wrote that sentence I could see how pathetic it might sound but imagine having your performance in the workplace publicly graded every week.
These examples of insecurity are in no way confined to the players. Whenever a manager mentions in an interview that he never reads the papers, then you know for certain that the first thing he does on a Monday morning is go through every match report with a highlighter pen.
Adding pressure to your own game is sometimes unavoidable and can manifest itself in poor performances, the culmination of which can lead to a dark and depressing cul-de-sac. Tragically, there are examples of players who have reached this tipping point. In 2009 Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper, killed himself after struggling to come to terms with the death of his daughter, his illness not helped by an inability to deal with the scrutiny of his performances and anything less than his own high standards.
Unfortunately, mental illness among the wealthy, and in particular those in sport that are perceived by the public to be doing the job they love, remains a tough concept for some to get their head around. The word "depression" is suffering from a tired image and doesn't seem to have penetrated the public divide in perhaps the same way that, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder has.
Yet, strangely for a game dominated by pent-up testosterone, the acknowledgment and treatment of depression is getting better. Managers understand, perhaps more than ever, that the talent of a modern-day footballer will tend to put them in a position of wealth and fame at a very young age, bringing vulnerability as well as huge rewards.
The media coverage of football has also changed, leading to a relentless quest for content that has driven an interest in the personal lives of many players. Because of this, I feel there is a real opportunity for our governing bodies to lay down a marker for what players can expect from the media and the terraces and what is an invasion of human rights.
Some have asked why a banker, which Rafati is, would ever want to be a part of any of this. The added pressure of refereeing top-flight football is in evidence almost every day of the week but, while banking is certainly a way to make a good living, it is, first and foremost, a job. Football is a passion and in an ideal world something to live for not to die as a result of.
The world, of course, is far from ideal and that makes it easy for all of us to point the finger at times. Sometimes I'll see fans screaming at players of their own team with such anger that for a moment I lose all identification with them; the butterfly effect is the player that hurriedly makes his way to the coach as hundreds of kids wait for autographs.
In my own way, I have learnt to cope with the side-effects of this game but only because I believe, in fact I know, that if some of those involved with football have arrived at a moment in their lives where they feel that standing in front of a train or slitting their wrists in a hotel room is the only way out, then it isn't just a game any more, is it?
Not too long ago we were talking about Robert Enke, many people were asking the same question, how did it come to this? why didnt he seek help? It isnt that simple, and the second question is one that both saddens and infuriates those who do suffer. It is so easy for someone outside it all to throw off easy words, without actually trying to understand what it is like to be in that frame of mind.
Enke could not get over the death of his daughter, despite everything else in the world he had going for him. He was severely clinically depressed, and despite all the people around him, and even in such a forward thinking country as Germany, he transformed from a happy world star to a shell of a man who drove in front of a train
(i recommend you all read The Tragedy of Robert Enke, by Robert Reng)
In this country we are somewhat backwards when it comes to depression. idiot and ignorant posters like LiamWatson who rant on about soldiers miss the point entirely. You do not have to be in combat in hellish situations to be depressed, perhaps that is the most terrifying aspect of it and why my friend refers to it as a cancer of the mind. It does not care for who you are or what you do, or how much money you have.
In such a macho and ignorant atmosphere in english football, those who suffer find it difficult to come out and seek help, they feel crushed by an overwhelming sense of shame and worry that they will be victimised, one just has to look at some of the chants in the crowd about any subject. Indeed this was Enke's greatest fear, and what stopped him from being able to deal with. How much more so in an atmosphere as venomous as ours.
We talked before about the german ref on these threads, and the criticism that drove him to his actions and in truth we are all guilty of that kind of criticism, I frequently vent about Jonny Evans myself, but none of us never really think about the impact.
On a personal level i come back to my friend, someone i've now know for 12 years, and for 5 years i had no idea she was depressed, up until the moment i randomly dropped in for tea, and clocked on to the fact she was getting ready to hang herself. My first reaction was shock, and a little bit of anger. For a while she could do nothing but cry, but after she stopped and began to talk, what came out was something that i still feel ashamed about to this day. She would frequently have terrible moments where nothing was good, and in these dark periods she would think about taking her life, and the she would feel so ashamed about this, she would cut herself to punish herself for such thoughts. She felt that couldnt tell us because of the way people would react to her and talk behind her back. These days she is a lot better, that day was a defining moment in her life where it became ok to have a problem and face it head on. She still doesnt know to this why she started to feel this way, what event in her life sparked itI always thought of her as just a bit moody, but I never saw the signs or paid enough attention, and were it not for a stroke of luck in a random moment...
It is all to easy to dismiss their actions as cowardly, without any understand of what is happening them. It is equally important to anyone who reads this who is in such a postion to realise there is no shame in depression. It is something that sufferers and non sufferers alike must tackle head on, without ignorance.
I written this in a gush so apologise for the rambling nature. But if you can take a moment to put that aside and hopefully you will take something from. And perhaps we wont ask "why did he do it?" we will learn to ask "what cane we do to stop it"?
Depressionisnt just feeling a bit down, it is as a friend of mine so unnervingly put it ( i'll come back to her later), is best desribed as a cancer of the mind. It is relentess, insidious, unrelenting and totally unchoosing of its victims. It doesnt matter if you are homeless, a nurse, a soldier, a footballer, or a multibillionare. It can manifest itself in so many ways and make no mistake it is a killer.
A few says ago, before all of this, i was reading the Secret Footballer, which featured an article which would turn out to be so tragically apt:
[h=1]The Secret Footballer: Sometimes there's darkness behind the limelight[/h] Mental illness is another of football's taboos, but attitudes are starting to change and it is not before time
The ability of football to turn life on its head with only a single blast of the referee's whistle makes it almost too easy to get carried away with the game at times. One minute everything is going well and seconds later things have never looked so bleak; sometimes that pressure is simply too much. Last week the attempt by the Bundesliga referee Babak Rafati to kill himself had pundits and commentators alike preferring to "put football into perspective" rather than ask the awkward questions that nobody wants to answer.
Many top sports people know only too well what Rafati is going through. On Friday, Stan Collymore, the former Liverpool striker, used his Twitter account to tell the world that his latest bout of depression was one of the most severe yet, prompting him to reveal that he hasn't seen daylight for four days. I certainly understand the feeling of wanting to shut yourself away from the world and when I was first diagnosed with depression in 2002 it was even more of a stigma than it is today.
Since football exploded as a global business some 20 years ago the pressure on everybody involved has become a poisoned chalice. On the one hand the rewards are vast but on the other failure, or even mediocrity, can become the barometer against which all aspects of life are measured, albeit for a minority.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying for one minute that everyone involved with the game is in a state of irreparable depression, but I do think that the majority of us feel a degree of pressure, from the thought of what the headline writers have in store for us to the fans that start work on Monday morning unsure if they'll have enough money to put fuel in their car, never mind afford another £40 ticket come Saturday.
When I started playing there was no media training or sports psychology to help you along the way; pressure was just something you had to deal with. Some players remain so anxious that they are physically sick before games, and one of my friends from the continent took to having oxygen such was his fear of underperforming.
On many occasions, I have seen players affected by what somebody has said about them on a message board or in a newspaper. Even if there are 99 positive comments, they will put all their efforts into searching for the one negative remark and, subsequently, put all their energy into worrying about it.
A player, of course, knows only too well if he has played poorly, and yet the fear of seeing a below-par performance pulled apart by a journalist remains a huge obstacle for some. I must confess that in days gone by I have refused interviews with some reporters when I've felt that the rating out of 10 given to me in their match report the previous week did not reflect my true contribution. As I wrote that sentence I could see how pathetic it might sound but imagine having your performance in the workplace publicly graded every week.
These examples of insecurity are in no way confined to the players. Whenever a manager mentions in an interview that he never reads the papers, then you know for certain that the first thing he does on a Monday morning is go through every match report with a highlighter pen.
Adding pressure to your own game is sometimes unavoidable and can manifest itself in poor performances, the culmination of which can lead to a dark and depressing cul-de-sac. Tragically, there are examples of players who have reached this tipping point. In 2009 Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper, killed himself after struggling to come to terms with the death of his daughter, his illness not helped by an inability to deal with the scrutiny of his performances and anything less than his own high standards.
Unfortunately, mental illness among the wealthy, and in particular those in sport that are perceived by the public to be doing the job they love, remains a tough concept for some to get their head around. The word "depression" is suffering from a tired image and doesn't seem to have penetrated the public divide in perhaps the same way that, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder has.
Yet, strangely for a game dominated by pent-up testosterone, the acknowledgment and treatment of depression is getting better. Managers understand, perhaps more than ever, that the talent of a modern-day footballer will tend to put them in a position of wealth and fame at a very young age, bringing vulnerability as well as huge rewards.
The media coverage of football has also changed, leading to a relentless quest for content that has driven an interest in the personal lives of many players. Because of this, I feel there is a real opportunity for our governing bodies to lay down a marker for what players can expect from the media and the terraces and what is an invasion of human rights.
Some have asked why a banker, which Rafati is, would ever want to be a part of any of this. The added pressure of refereeing top-flight football is in evidence almost every day of the week but, while banking is certainly a way to make a good living, it is, first and foremost, a job. Football is a passion and in an ideal world something to live for not to die as a result of.
The world, of course, is far from ideal and that makes it easy for all of us to point the finger at times. Sometimes I'll see fans screaming at players of their own team with such anger that for a moment I lose all identification with them; the butterfly effect is the player that hurriedly makes his way to the coach as hundreds of kids wait for autographs.
In my own way, I have learnt to cope with the side-effects of this game but only because I believe, in fact I know, that if some of those involved with football have arrived at a moment in their lives where they feel that standing in front of a train or slitting their wrists in a hotel room is the only way out, then it isn't just a game any more, is it?
Not too long ago we were talking about Robert Enke, many people were asking the same question, how did it come to this? why didnt he seek help? It isnt that simple, and the second question is one that both saddens and infuriates those who do suffer. It is so easy for someone outside it all to throw off easy words, without actually trying to understand what it is like to be in that frame of mind.
Enke could not get over the death of his daughter, despite everything else in the world he had going for him. He was severely clinically depressed, and despite all the people around him, and even in such a forward thinking country as Germany, he transformed from a happy world star to a shell of a man who drove in front of a train
(i recommend you all read The Tragedy of Robert Enke, by Robert Reng)
In this country we are somewhat backwards when it comes to depression. idiot and ignorant posters like LiamWatson who rant on about soldiers miss the point entirely. You do not have to be in combat in hellish situations to be depressed, perhaps that is the most terrifying aspect of it and why my friend refers to it as a cancer of the mind. It does not care for who you are or what you do, or how much money you have.
In such a macho and ignorant atmosphere in english football, those who suffer find it difficult to come out and seek help, they feel crushed by an overwhelming sense of shame and worry that they will be victimised, one just has to look at some of the chants in the crowd about any subject. Indeed this was Enke's greatest fear, and what stopped him from being able to deal with. How much more so in an atmosphere as venomous as ours.
We talked before about the german ref on these threads, and the criticism that drove him to his actions and in truth we are all guilty of that kind of criticism, I frequently vent about Jonny Evans myself, but none of us never really think about the impact.
On a personal level i come back to my friend, someone i've now know for 12 years, and for 5 years i had no idea she was depressed, up until the moment i randomly dropped in for tea, and clocked on to the fact she was getting ready to hang herself. My first reaction was shock, and a little bit of anger. For a while she could do nothing but cry, but after she stopped and began to talk, what came out was something that i still feel ashamed about to this day. She would frequently have terrible moments where nothing was good, and in these dark periods she would think about taking her life, and the she would feel so ashamed about this, she would cut herself to punish herself for such thoughts. She felt that couldnt tell us because of the way people would react to her and talk behind her back. These days she is a lot better, that day was a defining moment in her life where it became ok to have a problem and face it head on. She still doesnt know to this why she started to feel this way, what event in her life sparked itI always thought of her as just a bit moody, but I never saw the signs or paid enough attention, and were it not for a stroke of luck in a random moment...
It is all to easy to dismiss their actions as cowardly, without any understand of what is happening them. It is equally important to anyone who reads this who is in such a postion to realise there is no shame in depression. It is something that sufferers and non sufferers alike must tackle head on, without ignorance.
I written this in a gush so apologise for the rambling nature. But if you can take a moment to put that aside and hopefully you will take something from. And perhaps we wont ask "why did he do it?" we will learn to ask "what cane we do to stop it"?
