Depression football's big secret

By Dr Tammi

PhD Forensic Psychiatry

 

Referee giving out a red card during a beMobile premier league match.

Football is a tough sport and there really is no support network for those who are troubled or in need of help. Players know that any admission of a problem or a call for help would see them annihilated by their team-mates once they started to feel good again, so as a result there would be a real air of silence when it came to telling people that you needed help.

Furthermore, while changing rooms can certainly be tough places, much of what goes on is bravado and nobody is going to "annihilate" you for revealing you suffer from depression. In my experience there is a team-mate in every dressing room whom you can confide in if you have problems but is this not the time when clubs should employ sports psychologists who sit down for the sort of one-to-one chats with players and technical stuff.

I do not understand why physical training for athletes is not accompanied by cognitive training, rather than just 'positive thinking'. Media training would also be helpful. Because most of the stress is generated by media stories. Running therapy groups or support groups, is the way forward but how many will attend and admit they have a problem which is why teams need to employ services of qualified professionals to identify these signs early in our players.

Being a First lady of football, I have seen so many players and former suffer, we need to try to always see the positive with any player dedicated enough to have made a career from football, as well as try not to even engage with anyone who spews poison towards aforementioned professional footballers.

I know that this attitude will not help move newspapers or add to the sensationalism and hype of professional football, but maybe if more people started acting this way then the next young or old man might not feel that his every motion is being critiqued. And maybe he will feel that the world is actually not a bad place to be. Footballers must be taught to deal with issues that cause depression like long term injuries, being benched week in week out, being loaned out, losing games and end of contracts to name a few. Sadly African football our boys are "used up then dumped" that's a blog for another day.

Depression is an illness; it needs medication to boost low serotonin levels in the same way that Diabetes sufferers need insulin. Then some therapy to challenge the black suffocating isolating negative vortex. To be able to make a step away from a place where there seems absolutely no point to anything. A lot of the stigma attached to mental illness is that the sufferers can somehow just 'snap out of it' with a bit of banter or tough love. That they're not really ill and are simply choosing to be negative. It's very different from that and non-sufferers really don't understand.

In my job I see all the mental health staff. If things get dark you need to talk to someone who will listen and you need to do it quickly. Some people, particularly men, particularly working class men, just aren't going to do that though are they? There’s a social pressure and there's stigmas and it makes it difficult for individuals to get help, or to even admit to themselves that they need help.