Depression in sport: a sleeping giant awakes



Depression in sport is no longer a taboo subject
(picture courtesy of 3 0 d a g a r m e d a n a l h u s)

Andrew Flintoff is the latest sports star to admit to suffering from depression. Steven Perryman looks at a historically taboo subject in sport and how it’s finally ditching its stigma

 

The final bell sounds. The last ball is bowled. The finish line is crossed one last time. It’s the moment all elite sportsmen and women fear the most: the moment their career ends.

The routine is gone. The hours, days, months and years of a strict training and diet regime is no more. Nothing remains.

Nothing, except the rest of your life.

It’s not surprising that when facing this predicament many sportsmen get depressed and crave their former glories. If one in five people in the UK are affected by depression at some point in their lives, then it is not surprising that sports stars are prone to it too.

Thankfully, the stigma of depression and sport is finally coming out into the light where it should – and needs – to be.

Depression during your sporting career

This week Andrew Flintoff became the latest in a long line of sports stars to reveal the aching emptiness he felt when his sports career was cut short.

All that he had known since being a young lad peppering local houses around Lytham & St Anne’s Cricket Club with sixes was gone.

That Flintoff has found solace in a boxing career – albeit with a TV crew in tow – suggests that it’s not that easy to let go of the training and diet routine. 
 

But Flintoff is only the latest elite sports star to admit to suffering depression. Marcus Trescothick, Neil Lennon, Stan Collymore, Frank Bruno

are just a few recent examples.

And this Saturday night another, boxer Ricky Hatton, climbs through the ropes again, three years after being upended and left frighteningly motionless by Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas.

Many have questioned his desire to come back, and he has spoken of a devil on his shoulder telling him he let everyone down. Perhaps more concerning are tales of lying on the sofa, depressed with a kitchen knife in his hand ready to end it all.

Of course, the plights of Frank Bruno and Arturo Gatti show that boxing careers in particular rarely end with content. There are certainly far too many examples to mention of those who had one fight too many.

Success at a young age

Success at a young age is also a factor. In his biography out this month, swimmer Ian Thorpe admits to being treated for depression since he was a teenager, and that it led him to drink during the night in the lead-up to the 2004 Athens Olympics. He has also admitted that he hadn’t told his family about his problem until this year.

And that’s part of the problem. For too long depression has been seen as a taboo subject and burying feelings only compounds the issue. How would Thorpe had coped if he had counselling during his career? It’s hard to say, but it surely would have helped.

 

But sometimes it’s not as easy as that. Just ask Teresa Enke, the widow of Robert Enke, the Hannover 96 and Germany galkeeper who committed suicide in 2009.

She knew of his affliction throughout his whole career and tried to support him through the dark days.

It is a fight tragically but beautifully told in Ronald Reng’s

A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke. In Reng’s personal insight into Enke’s mind, we see a man struggling with the pressures of elite sport and in a profession which compounds his illness. It is a heart-breaking read.

When Enke committed suicide three years ago by jumping in front of a train, it shocked the world. But not Teresa. She had toyed with the grim possibility that the day would come for years. And tragically, on 10 November 2009, it did.

Sometimes, it seems, depression is too encompassing to be solved by a solution as simple as a counsellor.

The gender divide

One thing that instantly strikes you about the cases of depression in sport is that almost all the high profile cases appear to be men. Ian Maynard, professor of sport psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, says the fact that sportsmen are not naturally emotional does not help their cause.

‘They don't wear their heart on their sleeve because that can cause problems in competition, so they tend to be more buttoned-up and get a mentally tough exterior.’

Perhaps the answer is to treat the mind as a crucial part of the training process; as a necessity whether you are mentally fragile or not?

Possible solutions to depresion in sport

It’s something that has been used in golf for many years – although admittedly because of the mental nature of the sport, rather than as a solution to depression per se.

For example, when Ernie Els won The Open in 2002 who was the first person he spoke to before the play-off? Not his wife, coach or swing guru. It was his sports psychologist.

It’s also something that British Cycling has been inadvertently managing through its use of psychologist, Dr Steve Peters. Whilst there are no reported cases of depression amongst the cyclists, they do have access to Peters and complex, emotional characters like Bradley Wiggins and the now-retired Victoria Pendleton have reaped huge rewards from it, particularly this year.

Quite how many medals the emotionally-fragile Pendleton would have won without that help is an interesting proposition. It is no surprise that Pendleton has hired Peters to work with her on the current series of Strictly Come Dancing.  
 

Perhaps there is a solution in there somewhere. Anything which prevents another sorry tale like Robert Enke can only be a good thing.