The Malaysian Insider

NOV 21 — A few years ago, when Robbie Williams* declared that he was suffering from depression, the general media and public reaction was mixed. Here was a guy who, having quit one of the most successful boybands of the time, then made a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, had a bevy of beauties on his arm every other night, had a mansion in Los Angeles… he was depressed?

Surely this was too much, some said. Depression was if you were Tommy and Gina** trying to make a living as jobs dwindled on the docks. He was rich, he was famous… how could he not be happy?

Whether or not Robbie Williams was really depressed is not a matter of contention (in this article at least), but depression among those society deem to be successful is often misunderstood. Last week, as news of Robert Enke’s suicide filtered through Sky Sports News, I had to Google to check whether what my ears were hearing was correct.

Enke, at the time of his death, was the goalkeeper for Hanover 96 of the German Bundesliga, and had become a familiar face to me ever since UK cable TV picked up live German leagues game. For so long third in line as Germany’z goalkeeper, a career rejuvenation along with Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehmann’s retirements meant that in 2010, Enke was favourite for the German number 1 shirt.

Having overcome false starts, injuries and illnesses, things were finally falling into place for him – career wise, at least. But on Nov 10, 2009, he jumped in front of a commuter train going 160kph and ended his life. Police confirmed he left behind a suicide note.

Following his death, his wife Teresa revealed that for more than five years, Enke had been suffering from depression and had been seeking treatment from a psychiatrist. His illness was perhaps exacerbated by the loss of his two-year old daughter Lara in 2006 from a rare heart condition. She also confirmed that he hid his depression from public knowledge out of fear – a BBC News article revealed that he apologised for hiding his condition in his suicide note.

Robert Enke is not the first sports star at the top of his game to suffer from depression, and chances are he would not be the last. According to football website Four Four Two, Mohamed Sissoko has confessed to being a victim of depression, as had Gianluigi Buffon, the Italian goalkeeper. But not many football clubs employ psychologists to deal with mental issues that affect their players.

After all, why would people living the dream of millions of others need a head doctor, eh? Playing professional football or other A-list sports is the dream of many and the reality of a few – to have made it is to have succeeded, and surely happiness and success are happy bedfellows.

But even the happiest of bedfellows have tiffs, and the pressures faced by an athlete, while clearly not something I can attest to being familiar with, are greater than one normally assumes it to be.

Take Sissoko, mentioned above, once of Liverpool and now with Juventus, who confessed that he suffered from depression while recovering from a long-term injury. Injuries are the death knell to many sportsmen, because it reduces their earning power by manifolds.

Sure, once you break into the top echelons of the game, the money literally rolls in, but as a function of one’s total life, the years during which that money can be earned is a small proportion of one’s adult life.

Your limbs are literally your bread and butter, and to get to the top, you would have started at a young age and focused on athletic success and that alone. Injuries mean an almost instant threat to future earning power.

The pressure is therefore, to maximise earnings during that very small window where one’s physique is at its peak, because at this point you are not only earning for today, but for your tomorrow and days after as well.

But they earn billions a year, I hear you say. Quite right, but that only applies to the top 5 per cent of professional athletes. For every Cristiano Ronaldo, there are hundreds of others who earn a fraction of what he earns. ***

Contrast this with, say, a corporate professional who would, on a monthly basis, earn a lot less than an athlete at his peak, but is able to sustain that earning power almost consistently over his adult lifetime. The pressures, here, are inherently different. But at this conjecture I put it to you: how are the worries of an athlete suffering from a career-threatening injury different from that of a worker facing redundancy?

Then, of course, there is the pressure of being in the public eye. For some (yes, you, David Beckham) this is a calculated choice, but for others they are thrown into the media glare with little desire of their own. Take the case of South African athlete Caster Semenya, who won the women’s 800m at the World Athletic Championship amidst allegations of gender confusion.

Thrown into the limelight over a very personal and sensitive issue that is of no control of her own, in last week’s Guardian Weekend Semenya spoke of her desire to just be allowed to run and be left alone. Suspicions arose because she bettered her time by 8 seconds – this led to investigations and allegations that she may have internal testes and is producing excess testosterone: but if she was a man, surely her 800m times are pretty poor compared to the men?

As it is her gold medal winning time is not even in the top 10 800m times for women in the history of the sport. The IAAF was due to announce the results of all tests on Nov 20,  although whether this leads to more questions than answers, remains to be seen.

One’s internals are not quite what a young lady wants the world to be discussing, and yet this is exactly what Semenya is facing. Interestingly enough, if it is true that she is producing extra testosterone and will no longer be allowed to compete in athletics as a woman – where will she compete? All doors of competition are suddenly shut to her; and the fact that she is pursuing a sports science course at university in South Africa is looking to be a sound investment career wise, because sadly her talent will no longer be on offer for us to see, if the results of her tests confirm the above.

So yes, there are pressures that one faces, regardless of status. But the stigma that surrounds the illness of depression itself does not allow people to acknowledge their condition and seek treatment for it – even among “commoners” like you and me.

The general impression is that depression is not an illness and it is often associated it with weak character, many non-sufferers are unaware of the debilitation that comes with depression – any admission to it would more quickly be brushed off by friends as “mengada-ngada” rather than offering to assist  the sufferer in getting help.

In a way, it is a shame Enke never spoke publicly about his condition, because he would have been an excellent spokesperson for the illness and could have encouraged others to come out of the depression closet and seek help. But perhaps in his death, he is still speaking about the dangers of depression.

*The popstar, not the Middlesex cricketer, Accrington Stanley defender or Huddersfield Town midfielder. Just in case you were confused..

**Tommy and Gina, of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer fame.

*** At Wycombe Wanderers, a professional football club playing in the Coca Cola League 1, the annual wages and salaries for the year ended June 2008 was just a little over £3 million (RM16.5 millon). This includes players, administration and directors of the club.

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