Today is World Mental Health Day

[d000hg]

How do you know if you're sufferring from depression? How does anybody know?

I suppose you look up the symptoms?

[cailin maith]

How do you know if you're sufferring from depression? How does anybody know?

You just know something isn't right but the hard part isn't spotting it - it's asking for help.

[Gibbon]

And you've had help since then? Hope so.

There is such a stigma attached to mental health issues Unfairly too as I'd guess more people would admit to needing a little bit of help every now and again, if it was ok to be more open about it all.

That's the whole point of today, trouble is because of the stigma people try to hide it and become more isolated and then more ill and then ....

[mudskipper]

How do you know if you're sufferring from depression? How does anybody know?

Quite. How do you know what's normal, and how other people feel?

Did try talking to one of my friends once - was going through a phase when I couldn't stop dwelling on the negative things in life. "Oh, everyone does that" she said. Maybe they do?

I think if you're normally jolly and you get depressed, it's fairly obvious. But where it ticks along for years, it's harder to gauge what normal is.

I read Enke's biography - for him it was very obvious as his mood changed from his normal mood.

[Mich the Tester]

I thought I had depression a long time ago when I was trying to break into first class rugby, having run-ins with a coach who didn't like me, my form had deserted me, I was going backwards physically and basically felt tulip all the time, lost friends through acting in a passive-agressive fashion, started drinking heavily and basically felt my life was crap. Turned out after talking to a sports doctor that it was all caused by overtraining; took 6 months out of playing and training and just did a bit of cycling, then spent 6 months building up again and accepted I wouldn't make the very top level in 15s; ended up playing a good standard and playing high level 7s instead. But overtraining is nasty; sounds like the whining of a spoilt athlete, but chronic overtraining is a nasty condition which can make you feel very depressed indeed; Overtraining and Depression in sport: Is there a difference? It hits a lot of sportspeople who step up from playing for fun to really serious competition where there is real pressure, and who often double or even treble their training hours in a short time.

Nowadays much more is known about it and young sportspeople tend to be managed rather better than in the past, although when I hear about very slim female athletes being called 'fat' by UK Athletics officials, or the case a few years ago of swimmers being bullied into training beyond their capacity, it pisses me off; some people in positions of responsibility just don't know the damage they can do with the odd silly remark. Top sportspeople might come across as supremely confident, even arrogant people who've got it all and just want more, but in most cases they are very sensitive beings and if the personal and psychological side of coaching is neglected, they can be broken quite easily.

[mudskipper]

And so joining CUK General made you realise that in fact there are far more fruity loopier people in the world than yourself.

And loopy fruitier people too.

[d000hg]

...

Very interesting. Of course, isn't it possible that it WAS depression... it is a physiological condition (to some extent at least) so over-training could knacker your brain as much as your body?

[Mich the Tester]

Very interesting. Of course, isn't it possible that it WAS depression... it is a physiological condition (to some extent at least) so over-training could knacker your brain as much as your body?

Yep, possible, and chronic overtraining and depression seem to be closely related, and often occur among extremely ambitious people. One case that interests me for more than purely 'Iwould-ish' reasons is Victoria Pendleton; she's reputed to have bouts of very nasty passive-aggressive behaviour, blind fury and moments of shutting out the world, and has been very successful in a sport that she says she doesn't even like, supposedly to prove to her father she could do it. I can actually understand that; I spent 32 years playing rugby as if it was the most important thing in my life, trained 5 days a week and played once a week, smashed up most of my body for the sake of winning and stopped last summer with a nasty shoulder injury, and you know what? I don't even miss it.

Sure, I'm still doing sports, but I just don't miss rugby for some reason; maybe I didn't really love it that much, and if I think about it what I actually enjoyed was being good at something and being recognised for that. That's perhaps the reason Pendleton did it all, and she succeeded, but if things are going less than perfect you can't just enjoy playing, it actually affects your whole being. I can't play 'social rugby' and just enjoy a beer after the game regardless of the result; it's about winning, and I happened to be able to win in rugby; if it had been something else, like running, tennis or even football, I'd perhaps have felt the same way about it. Strangely, now that I'm doing some track cycling I'm enjoying sport more than ever; I know I can't beat the young guys, even though I'm always tempted to try (but I can beat some of the people my own age), but it's just bloody good fun to ride a bike at silly speeds around an indoor track. Wish I'd done it earlier!

[Ketchup]

I've suffered from anxiety and purely obsessive OCD for most of my adult life to varying degrees. There is an enourmous stigma attached to all forms of mental illness, at first i kept it hidden from all but my closest friends and family, but now i really dont care.

[mudskipper]

Today I saw my GP and have just swallowed my first levothyroxine pill. Optimistic that years (decades) of feeling knackered and bloody miserable were all caused by low thyroid hormone and two weeks from now I should be a new woman!

Watch this space!