Many of us were shocked and saddened to hear of the suicide of the manager of the Welsh national football team, Gary Speed. He was 42, he’d seemed well, happy and enthusiastic about his family, his career success and the Welsh team, and yet something must have been very wrong for him. People drew parallels between his death and that of the German goalkeeper, Robert Enke.

But something positive seems to have come out of his death, too. It is reported that several top footballers have sought help for their depression in the days following his death.  And it has put the question of mental health back on the agenda.

One of the questions people ask is, how can highly paid, successful sports stars, who have it all, become so miserable. I think one of the answers lies in the relationship between depression and stress.

Top competitors can be as stressed in their career as anyone. They put themselves through demanding training regimes, and many of them sacrifice their family life to the requirements of the sport as the pursue their career success. The satisfaction you can achieve when you are that focused on one thing and one thing only can be enormous. But that level of success is not always enough, and many sports people find it difficult to cope with the consequences of failure, or a dwindling career.

I have a number of friends who are musicians. Some of them have enjoyed fame and fortune in the past, then lost it. Some handle it well, while others turn to drink or drugs and become depressed because they feel as if their identity is lost, and they can’t find alternatives that fill their time or their life in the way performing to thousand of people did.

So what’s this got to do with those of us who are running the 9 to 5, then?

A lot.

Stress and career success

Stress is a complex business. We all need some level of stress to function, otherwise we wouldn’t accomplish anything, but there are good levels of stress, which keep us motivated and interested, and bad levels of stress where we go into overwhelm – the famous flight or fight response. Fight or flight is a survival mechanism: faced by a sabre toothed tiger you can fight it or run away. But the modern equivalents of sabre toothed tigers often seem inescapable, whether it is the threat of eviction because you can’t pay the rent, or the threat from the gang on the corner, or the hideously noisy neighbours, or your own health, or that of a family member. These are all things that can lead us towards depression,

And work can be a huge source of stress, as can lack of it. For many of us, when we have a job, we have an identity, a role, a structure to our lives. If we are really lucky we have work friends and a sense of doing something worthwhile. It gives us money too. One of the big challenges of redundancy or losing your job is the loss of all that. People’s confidence often takes a tumble, they don’t feel they are contributing and their lives can become lacking in structure. It’s strange, because most of us want more time for ourselves when we are working, but when we get that time we haven’t the desire to use it productively. It’s not just the economy that suffers when people lose their jobs. Their mental and physical health may deteriorate too.

And when people are made redundant and becoming depressed, that can have a huge impact on their families. Other family members may have to work extra hours to pick up the financial stress, kids get used to seeing Mum or Dad hanging around, doing very little, looking miserable, even diminishing before their eyes. Some people become angry, and either turn the anger in on themselves, or out against their family or society.

Meanwhile, those who have kept their jobs are working harder. We’ve all heard tales of people working 60 hours weeks and having no time for friends or family, of incompetent managers who don’t know how to allocate work fairly, of work-place bullying, or of an culture that manages to erode individual self-confidence without even realising it. Even people who are extremely successful in an office-based job can suffer profound stress and/or depression.

New attitudes to depression

At least there is a growing willingness to talk about depression. For example, I heard a radio programme recently where comedienne Ruby Wax was talking about a new venture she is involved in, along with the mental health charity, Sane. It’s called black dog tribe: a space where people who have been or are depressed can come together. Ruby has been working to publicise the problem for a number of years. She was involved in the BBC’s headroom project, which has just ended. Although the site says it ran for 21/2 years, I was involved in it some years before that. At one time she was something of a voice crying in the wilderness. I hope she is becoming more mainstream.

As someone who has managed to work through depression, triggered in part by workplace stress (bullying), I know the importance of talking to others and getting help. It maybe that coaching can help you. That’s particularly true if the problem is stress, rather than depression. But if you are suffering from depression, if you find yourself wondering what the point of it all is, or you’re drinking/doing drugs more than before, or you can’t stop crying, or you can’t get out of bed in the morning, or you’ve lost all hope, then get help. Black Dog Tribe launches in the New Year. They currently have a Black Dog test site up, and plan to go fully live in January.  is   Mental health charities like Sane, or Mind, or the Mental Health Foundation can give you information and may be able to help you find support and treatment. There is no shame in depression. It is a mental health problem, and it is as real as a broken leg.