HAVING a mental illness does not mean you cannot live a full and successful life, former Celtic captain Neil Lennon said yesterday.
The footballer was speaking as a new study detailed how, although the road to recovery may be long, with some spending their whole lives struggling with their condition, people do get better.
The authors of the study, carried out by the Scottish
Recovery Network, could have found no better example than Lennon to launch their report.
Yesterday the 36-year-old told The Scotsman about his experiences with depression and the reaction since he talked publicly about his ongoing battle.
Lennon has suffered depression for the past eight years. He said it was a "lonely and miserable" existence at times.
He talked of how the illness had come out of the blue, with no obvious trigger.
"I would look fine, but inside I would be absolutely dying," the former Celtic captain said. "It did affect my concentration. It did affect my performance obviously. Not only did it affect me mentally, but it affected me physically.
"I lost my appetite. I just didn't want to play football anymore. I didn't want to be around people. I did not want to put my boots on in the morning. I didn't want to get out of bed, but I had to do all these things because I was in the public eye."
Lennon, who moved to Nottingham Forest Football Club earlier this year, said it was hard to describe to people who had not suffered from depression what it felt like. "I just didn't have any buzz. I was playing on autopilot. I was playing from memory sometimes. It was really hard going out and playing in front of all those people. You actually felt alone. There were 60,000 people in the crowd and 22 people on the pitch and I just felt in a wee bubble."
Lennon, who moved from Leicester to Celtic in a £5.75 million deal in 2000, was finally diagnosed with depression by the club doctor Roddy McDonald.
He has since revealed his struggle in his autobiography Man and Bhoy, which he said he hoped would tackle the stigma around mental health problems. "I don't think it is anything to be ashamed of anymore. It's become more and more common," he added.
"People who know me as a person and as a public figure would think I am the last person they would have thought would have depression, someone as cocky as me, as confident as me, as aggressive as me."
He said depression, for which he still takes medication, had made him a stronger person. "You do come out the other side a stronger person. I am actually not ashamed of having depression. I'm actually quite proud, proud of the fact that I have had it and come through it. I still regard myself very much as being in recovery and think I will always be."
He added: "I have had people writing to me and saying how much they appreciated me coming forward and it had helped them. It is nothing to be ashamed of and I really want to lose the stigma around mental health."
CORRECT TREATMENT IS KEY
EVEN people with the most serious and long-term mental health problems can recover, experts say.
The report by the Scottish Recovery Network (SRN) yesterday said that getting support from loved ones, keeping a positive outlook and having the right treatment were key to coping with mental illness.
The report, Recovering Mental Health in Scotland, considered the experiences of 67 people who had suffered conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Simon Bradstreet, the SRN director, said: "People who experience mental health problems truly are experts by experience.
"The most valuable lessons about recovery come from those who have been through the highs and lows of the journey themselves."
The full article contains 655 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
