Talking About Depression And Suicide In Football ai??i?? Four Years Later

By June Pan
11 years Ago

Four years after Robert Enke’s suicide, what is being done to break the silence and stigma surrounding depression in football?

For the football world, depression remains largely shrouded in silence.

Four years ago today, Robert Enke stepped in front of an express train in Eilvese. He was 32 years old. He left behind a wife and infant daughter, grieving friends and fans, and that unanswerable question: why?

Four years and many efforts to combat depression later, the conversation about mental health remains a ghastly shadow over the beautiful game, but one that is easily ignored. The year following Enke’s suicide, Hannover sporting director JAi??rg Schmadkte had said, “The day-to-day business of football has moved on as if nothing had happened. That is a bitter realization.”

Four years later, though, we still agree: depression is one of football’s dirty little secrets, and in that secrecy lays fatality. We need to break the silence and stigma around mental illness. But not all speech entails a breaking of that silence, not truly. Because how we talk about depression is as important as talking about depression itself.

There are two ways of devaluing people: by making them less than human, as we do with our enemies, or by making them superhuman, as an image of perfection — or, say, a footballer. “To the fans it does not matter a damn how you are,” said Gianluigi Buffon, who has himself struggled with depression. “You are seen as the footballer, the idol, so no one thinks to stop and ask you: ‘Hey, how are you?'”

Footballers who come forward with worries of burn-out or depression open themselves to public ridicule. After all, why should we be concerned with a superstar’s whinging, when his problem seems so small compared to the largeness of his fortune? It is as if fans forget the immense pressures placed on players from the time they enter this world up through the pinnacles of glory. Fame does not absolve the human body of its mortal limits and failings; wealth and success do not reprieve a man of the troubles that afflict the rest of the world.

In a 2013 documentary “Football’s Suicide Secret”, PFA chairman Clarke Carlisle investigates depression and suicide in British football. Through interviews and his own experiences, Carlisle delves into the pervasive nature of depression and what can be done to combat this illness. (A positive response model he cites is Germany, where players have access to a 24-hour depression hotline and psychiatric treatment through their club; the Robert Enke Foundation continues to promote mental health awareness; and Bundesliga academies do try to balance young players’ football development with their education, in recognition that professionalism will not be the end result for a vast majority of hopefuls.)

At the heart of educative efforts and campaigns like this is secrecy: the silence that surrounds depression, both from the afflicted who do not speak out, and those around him who do not notice. “The numbers in society are one in four, and footballers are members of that society,” said Carlisle. “The thing about football is that the reluctance to come forward and speak means there are so many guys sitting under the radar.”

Awareness, support, and open discussion has been the prescribed formula for combating depression in football. If players are aware of their own mental needs, have adequate support, and can openly address the problem without stigma, then it seems we will have succeeded.

But as well-meaning as it is to assure players that it is okay to say “I am suffering from depression” and “I need help” — the burden remains on the depressive to change himself. And to speak of suffering in a context where suffering itself is devalued as weakness, then that burden becomes an impossible weight. This is the vicious catch-22 of depression in a professional sporting world built on the premises of strength, fitness, and masculinity. Fans admire those footballers who soldier on through blood, sweat, and injury, biting back pain, keeping a stiff upper lip. Illness and frailty come to be viewed as speed bumps, not legitimate cause for care.

In this environment, it may not be enough to say: players should be aware enough to ask for help. We may need to take a step back and ask seriously: how can we create a world where those who suffer need not suffer in silence?

Depression is not an illness like any other. It may be treated with drugs and therapy, but the emotional and psychological complexity of the human mind cannot be diminished to a simple firing of synapses. A psychological ailment demands a psychological response — and that goes down to the level of cultural narratives regarding who we are, in our psyche, and what those narratives mean.

We cannot on one hand say, “Come forward with your suffering,” and on the other simultaneously insist that professional footballers, as epitomes of masculinity and athleticism, be indestructible idols. Depression, as an ailment, represents a moment of weakness that the sport-cultural imagination finds difficult to forgive — and there might redress begin.

Such redress might entail a willingness to forgive player mistakes and under performance, and to understand that paying someone A?100,000 a week does not mean he receives 100,000 shares of happiness. It might entail understanding that being masculine is not the same thing as being human. Because to be human is to be constituted by weaknesses, and the imitative perfection achieved in athleticism does not shroud or overcome that originary lack, but rather is all the more beautiful for it.

If this seems too alien a concept, it need not be. We love sport as a stage for unscripted human struggle and triumph. Suffering is part of that struggle — and as football fans, we already know that. After all, which fan has not felt that exquisite anguish or fury, helpless, in the face of loss? And fans understand that football is more than just mere entertainment, that life is not always about sport, but sport is so often about life.

And addressing mental illness in sport might also begin with addressing it in everyday life. Depression has no logic or economy. To quote a first-hand account:

You may know what itai??i??s like to have a bad day, or lose someone you love, or feel low, but depression is different. Some feel abject sadness, while others feel nothing, literally nothing. No matter how great or amazing their life might seem, the depression takes over, it takes control and it doesnai??i??t matter if youai??i??re on ridiculous wages, or playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world, nothing will make you feel good. Nothing will make you feel alive.

“It’s not so bad.” “Look on the bright side.” “You’ll be fine.” These everyday platitudes flung at depressives like misguided lifelines are just that — misguided. Rather than exhortation, what is needed may be so simple as: “I’m listening. I’m trying to empathize. I’m acknowledging you as a person, not as an illness or a weakness.” Because without such groundwork, asking a depressive to come forward can seem like a command to a prisoner from a judge with gavel in hand.

Perhaps this is the task that faces us now as football fans and as communities, four years after Robert Enke’s death. We need to keep talking, and to be aware of how. Because ending silence means not only exhorting the depressive to speak; it also means removing the pressure that sits on our chests and suffocates the voice crying out for help.

Categories: Editor's Pick, Features, German Bundesliga
Tags: Fans Gianluigi Buffon

Four years after Robert Enke’s suicide, what is being done to break the silence and stigma surrounding depression in football?

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