by Anna Gekoski
Also, I think if you can get your mind to think more logically and put things in perspective – which again, some of these self-help books talk about – it’s actually useful in terms of thought processes and decisions. Say if you’ve got a difficult or stressful decision to make, if you step back a little bit and take in the whole then I think you can actually understand it better if you suffer from depression than if you don’t. I mean, in the Ministry of Defence I had to make some very difficult decisions but I never thought they were overwhelming because I could put them into perspective. And the other thing it does . . . I’ll give you an example, actually. When I was in the Ministry of Defence I had responsibility for personnel so I dealt with a lot of families who had lost people in Afghanistan and – although I could never put myself in their shoes – I think that I actually empathised with them better and perhaps understood better than I would have done if I hadn’t had depression.
Also, because politics is a rough old game where people say and do nasty things to you, if you actually have perspective then they’re not that hurtful. So I think a lot of people who’ve been through it say depression actually makes you a stronger person and I think, strange enough, it has. I think I’m fundamentally the same person I was before but I can just cope with situations a lot better now, because it allows you to put things in perspective and things become relative. So it’s not necessarily an inhibitor to having a fulfilled personal life or a productive working life, quite the opposite in some ways.
So I think employment is one field where stigma can really waste opportunity: when it labels people as not being able to work, whereas actually many perfectly well can with the proper help and support. But in a lot of jobs I think there’s a reluctance for people to come forward and say how they’re feeling, cos they think about how they’re going to be judged in terms of promotion and things like that. So I think there’s a huge education programme to be done, not just in how employers perceive mental illness, but also to train employers who have employees with mental health problems to understand how they can support them when they need it. And, as I said in the debate, work is actually good for you – for most people – it’s just the level and degrees of it.
If people do have problems, employers have got to, I think, give them time, and if they have to make adaptations for work– life balance, then do it. We’re a time-based culture: you know, more added hours into the day means more productivity. But I don’t think it actually makes people more productive at all, it just puts more pressures on people’s lives. I’ve always worked – and the people that work for me – on the basis that as long as the work gets done, I’m pretty flexible. And I think if you treat people with that type of respect and flexibility – rather than saying: ‘It’s five past nine, you’re five minutes late’ – then you get happier and better, as well as more loyal and productive, employees. I think if you look at Scandinavia and other countries, like Germany, they do this, and a minority of employers are starting to do it here already: experimenting with different hours, split shifts. And that’s the way forward I think. It’s the old BT thing: ‘It’s not about working harder, it’s about working smarter.’
I think another thing we have to look at is the pressures on younger people. I think there’s a hell of a lot of stresses on them that weren’t there when I was growing up. The Internet age means you’re supposed to be on top of information and accessible all the time. It’s a faster pace of life and people expect instant answers to things in the 24-hour media age. And is that good in one way? Well, yes it is, but I also think it actually brings pressures on people to have to do things. For younger people it actually changes the way they interact as well: you don’t sit and talk to people for hours like we used to do, you do it electronically. And although you’ve got all these friends on this, that, and the other, you’re actually on your own. When I was growing up it was a lot slower in that sense, you know? So I don’t think that’s good in that respect – the depths of those relationships are a lot shallower than they were before. And I think that is an issue that affects a lot of people and brings added pressures. And I see it getting worse.
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I still get black dog days. I don’t think it’s something I’m, in quotes, ‘cured from’. I don’t think you are. But, you know, I have my black dog days, but I think I know how to deal with them now. And I think I actually know when it’s coming up on me now, I can actually recognise it, that it’s coming. It’s that lack of interest in things, or putting things off, fretting over things that you should frankly just get on with and do. If it’s something simple like, I don’t know, changing a light bulb at home that’s been out for ages and you keep saying: ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’, then that’s a sign for me. So I know when that’s happening now, so what I do is I just get on and do things. I think: ‘The light bulb needs changing’, so I’ll do it. I actually say to myself: ‘Why are you putting it off, why are you thinking about this thing?’ You know?
But sometimes I’ll need a bit of bullying, sometimes that can help. Sometimes you just need that. I don’t think you should look at people who’ve got depression and think you should, like, walk on eggshells around them. When it comes to family, they’re important in terms of support, but I don’t think they always need to treat people who’ve got depression with kid gloves. I think in some cases, for a character like me, that’s the worst thing you can do. ‘Go and put that light bulb up and do that’, is actually better for me. Encouraging me to do something practical is good.
While the worst thing possible that you can ever say to anybody suffering from depression is: ‘Pull yourself together.’ Cos it is the most irritating thing. You know, my line is, if somebody says that to me, I say: ‘I’m not a pair of curtains.’ It just doesn’t help people. I mean, if you could actually explain sometimes why you get depressed it would be a lot easier. I keep saying this to my partner, when she says: ‘You seem a bit down’ – because she’s got like these antennae with me – and I say to her: ‘If I could explain it, it would be actually rational.’ But, you know, I think it’s one of those things where you can just feel it, it just comes up on you, it just gets you sometimes, or just creeps up.
My best technique now is what I call the ‘step back’ technique. I just step back and look mindfully, and if you do that it doesn’t solve it straightaway, but you do actually think: ‘Ummm, right’, you know? Because I’ve trained myself now to know when things are coming on. So I just think: well, one, find something to do, even if it’s just sitting reading a book. Or, frankly I’ve never been one to exercise, but I also walk a lot now and that helps a hell of a lot. Now, if I get my black dog days, I can walk for miles and you come back and you feel a lot better. And I usually try – I can’t today because I don’t have time – to take half an hour at lunch to just walk round the park. That helps in terms of, one, the exercise, but two, I think, in taking yourself out of where you are at the moment. I mean, we’re very fortunate living in beautiful countryside in North Durham and on – was it Sunday? – we walked for about ten miles. And it just seems to relax you. So that’s a technique I use.
I’ll tell you a very silly thing I also do sometimes – about putting things in perspective – I love sitting in my garden at night looking at the stars in the summer. I look at the massive universe and just think: ‘You’re actually pretty insignificant in this great scheme of things; you’re just one person and you’re here for a short period of time, so get things in perspective.’ A spiritual element? I don’t know about that, but you look at the stars and think that you might as well enjoy it while you can or make as good a contribution to it as you can. And it doesn’t matter what that contribution is: it might be being good at sport, or being a politician or even – I say even – doing a job that you like well and bringing a family up. It’s a contribution. People might say it’s too logical a perspective but when I see some of my constituents, in terms of struggling on low pay and bringing families up, it’s bloody tough for them
, you know, and I look at my own position and I think: ‘Well I’m a lot more fortunate than the position they’re in.’ And actually, if you’re asking me how it’s affected my life generally, I’d say positively. One thing I’ve learnt very much from my depression is that, frankly, if you step back and think about things, some things are meant to happen.
DEAN WINDASS
Former premiership footballer
‘When I do me guest speaking now, I come out and say: “Listen, I don’t care if you’re an ’airy-arsed fuckin’ biker or you’re at Oxford or whatever – if you don’t tell people that you’ve got a fuckin’ problem then how can anybody help you?’”
Dean Windass was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1969, where he started his footballing career as a teenage trainee at his home club, Hull City, before being released at the age of eighteen. Brought back and signed by the club at the age of twenty-two, Deano – as he became known – played 176 games for the Tigers and scored 57 goals, before being sold to Aberdeen in 1995. He later played for clubs including Oxford United, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Bradford City, before returning to Hull City in 2007, where his goal against Bristol City in the play-offs saw Hull promoted to the Premiership for the first time in the club’s 104-year history. He retired in 2009, at the age of forty, having made over 600 football league appearances and scoring some 230 goals in all competitions. Struggling to adjust to life after retirement from professional football, Dean became depressed and started drinking heavily, which eventually led to the breakdown of his marriage to his wife Helen, with whom he has two sons, Josh and Jordan. After two unsuccessful suicide attempts, he got help as an inpatient at the Sporting Chance Clinic and now has a job working for a hardware supplier in Hull, and does some football commentating.
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When I was at the peak of me football career I was a very bubbly character, always the joker in the pack so to speak. Just generally an ’appy goin’ kid. I had a good lifestyle, didn’t want for nothing really, had a lovely house, nice cars. Yeah, cars were a thing for me, I liked them, and every time a new car came out I’d probably go and buy one. Not so much sports cars, more sort of like general commercial Range Rovers, Audi Q7s and things like that. I had nearly every car in the book really. I had a wife, Helen, and two boys, Josh and Jordan – eighteen and thirteen year old now they are – and everything was going okay. You know, life was good, everything was going well: earning a bit of money, me family life, being with someone that you love, obviously scoring goals. Generally just being ’appy like, you know? So that was me.
But I never took anything for granted cos I used to work for a living before I was a footballer. I was earning £140 a week on a building site and £100 a week in a factory, so to sign for Hull City in the ’90s, me home town club, after getting released as an eighteen year old was . . . it was a big jump for me, and obviously I really enjoyed it. I mean me mam and dad weren’t skint when they were married, but they weren’t wealthy, so I appreciated everything I got when I did get summin. So I tried giving me boys what I never had, you know? I didn’t really care about money, all I cared about was seeing if me kids and me life was alright, that we had a nice home, and that when they wanted summin I could get ’em it.
I think the high point of me career was signing for professional football, first and foremost, as a twenty-one, twenty-two year old, in the ’90s. To sign professional forms is something that every boy wants to do. And to sign for me home town club was probably . . . probably the best thing that ever happened to me. And scoring that goal in the play-offs to get them up, that was a big part of me life really. It’s every young man’s dream to score at Wembley and to score a goal like that on that occasion – to take Hull City, me home town, into the Premier League after 104 years – I knew what it meant to everybody.
But I had to retire in 2009. I’d had a good twenty years but I went on loan to Oldham and summin just went there. I moved on again to Doncaster and by that time I stopped enjoying it, I stopped enjoying it. I’d always been at the front of the running – you know, one of the top five – not obviously sprinting-wise cos I never had any pace, but I was quite a strong runner, and even on me days off I got to the gym and ran. First and foremost I loved training, I enjoyed me training, you’re with twenty lads ’aving a laff and joke and a bit of a crack and it was a big part of me life. But I was reaching the end of me career. It was obviously getting harder: I started aching after training and after matches and I couldn’t recover like I used to do. Maybe I could have carried on for another year or so, but I just called it a day.
When I retired, I thought I had the divine right to just fuckin’ walk back into football. And I did get a job with Colin Todd, as assistant manager at Darlington, but I was only in the job for six months before we both got the sack. But I thought that I was invincible: ‘Oh, Dean Windass, scored me goal at Wembley, I’ll get another job’, and it didn’t fuckin’ work like that. Don’t get me wrong, I did all me coaching qualifications when I was a player, took me coaching badges, but obviously it’s not as easy as that. It’s like being a footballer: once you’re in it’s up to you then, but it’s just very difficult at the moment to get back in, there’s a lot of ex-footballers who are trying to get back in the game now.
But I was alright for a while when I retired cos I got a job with Sky Sports on Soccer Saturday, freelancing. I was getting up and still going to the gym every day, and then I was working on the Tuesday night or on a Saturday on a game, so you’re actually still watching football and you still feel part of it. But I lost that job. I’ve never been told the reason why, which sort of did disappoint me, as I really enjoyed it. But it come to an end for some unknown reason. I don’t really think it was anything to do with drinking or me mental health, I think there’s a lot of people on Sky – without mentioning any names – who’ve been down that road as well, and they’ve still got their jobs. Paul Merson would be an obvious example – I can mention him cos he’s already talked about his problems – but other people that I can’t mention with more recent stuff; another guy who’s been in rehab same as me, so it was a bit strange.
So all of a sudden you wake up in the morning and there’s nowt, there’s nowt to get up for. Depression . . . it’s one of them situations, not just for footballers but sports people in general – you’re doing something you love every day and you’ve got something to wake up for, and then all of a sudden you don’t. You ain’t got anything. Forget about the money, you could have all the money in the world, it makes no fuckin’ difference. I had no daily routine really then, so I was getting to the stage where I had nowt else to do, so I thought I’d go to the pub for a bit of company. You know what I mean. Then that sort of escalated to going to the pub every day – not going and getting drunk every day – but I was going to the pub every day. And I started putting a bit of weight on and I wasn’t training, I wasn’t looking after meself, and the more I did that the more down I got really. It was just a vicious circle. It’s tiring, it’s just so tiring; you’re waking up every day tired. I didn’t have any motivation, I couldn’t be arsed to go to the gym like I used to, because obviously I had a fuckin’ hangover.
The one problem I ’ad is that when I went and got drunk I ’ad to go an’ ’ave another beer the next day cos I ’ad ’eadache. So it was, like, ’air of the dog, you know, which wasn’t helping me. So when I went out, I’d go out on two-, or three-, or four-day benders. I wouldn’t come home for four days and me wife would be saying: ‘Where the fuck are you?’ and I’d say: ‘Fuck off I’m staying out’, and that’d be it, I’d just stay out for four days. I wouldn’t give . . . I wouldn’t care about anybody but meself when I were just staying out and getting pissed up, then coming home an’ not speaking to me wife for two or three days, and then fuckin’ arguing again. And then come the weekend I’d say I’d never fuckin’ do it again and then I’d carry on doing it, I kept doing it. Every time I got down, I fuckin’ went out and fuckin’ went on a two- or three-day bender
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So it put a strain on me family life. I’d been married for nineteen, twenty years and we were arguing all the time because I didn’t have a job and me wife was concerned that I was drinking too much, so we was rowing and then I was shouting and bawling at the kids. I was losing me temper, getting angry and punching walls ’n’ things like that, and me kids could see me doing it as well. If I ’ad an argument with me wife I went out an’ got drunk and peed the bed and did all things like that. I was just spiralling out of control really and in the end it broke our marriage up and it sort of went from bad to worse then. I split up with the wife, I left the family home, and I ended up moving in with a girl in Hull. And I just ended up with nothing to do: I didn’t see the kids as often as I wanted, I didn’t have any focus, you know?
Then me dad died, me dad passed away, which was a kick in the bollocks really. I’d had an argument with me dad before he died, cos obviously he was concerned about me and me wife. She was ringing me dad up and saying: ‘He’s getting out of control’, basically, and then I had a big argument with me dad for the first time in forty-one years. And then six months later he died, so that sort of . . . that sort of . . . I blame meself really, for him dying. See . . . he had a sudden heart attack and I just couldn’t get me head round it, you know, I couldn’t, I couldn’t . . . I just blame meself really. And looking back, although I don’t know when I started to first get depressed – it happens, it just happens, you don’t know what’s happening to you – I think it was every day after me dad died, it was every day that I was just drinking to block things out.