WHEN Robert Enke, the German national team's goalkeeper, jumped under a train on November 10, 2009, the whole world was in shock. It was known that he had been suffering from depression for six years, but his friends and acquaintances said years later that no one understood the seriousness of the problem. At least not until it was too late.
Bur Enke was not the only one facing this problem.
"Many times I couldn't wait for night to come so I could go to sleep. I felt so bad, like I needed a break from everything," said Andres Iniesta, one of the best soccer players of all time, the man we watched play in at least 200 games. Few people knew the personal demons he was facing on a daily basis.
Gianluigi Buffon, Tyson Fury, Michael Phelps, and Ronda Rousey are just some of world sports champions who, at one point in their career, suffered from depression. This problem does not get enough attention from professional sports staff or national health institutions. Things have to change before it is too late.
Athletes get sick more often than the rest of us
Although due to high levels of physical activity and the fact that happiness hormones are secreted after training, it does not seem logical that depression would greatly affect elite sports players, research shows completely different results.
Wolanin, Gross, and Hong, doctors of psychology from the University of New Jersey, conducted a study that found that between 16% and 20% of University athletes suffer from depression. Research by Frank, Nixdorf, and Beckmann from the University of Munich showed similar results. According to the data available for approximately three thousand German and American athletes across five different sports, the prevalence of depression ranges from 5-10% (as in the rest of the population) to as much as 30%.
The same authors also expressed their concern regarding the fact that depression in sports is generally not diagnosed in the manner it is diagnosed in the clinical system, which is why we do not even have a true picture of its prevalence. In other words, we know it is a huge problem, but there is also a possibility it may be much bigger than we have estimated so far.
Why are athletes a particularly vulnerable group?
Injuries and criticism are as much of a daily routine for elite athletes as fame and money
Some causes of depressive disorders in athletes are the same as in the rest of the population, such as genetics, social support, sense of control, and personality traits. On the other hand, there are at least a few factors that are specific to athletes.
The first factor pertains to injuries. We often forget that while doing sports is healthy, being a top athlete hurts the body as much as it benefits it. The amount and severity of injuries are probably the biggest problems in sports today, and it is estimated that approximately 85% of top athletes experience health problems for up to 20 years following the end of their careers.
Research on retired NFL players has shown physical changes in brain structures of those players who have suffered over ten concussions. The meninges and lobes are irreversibly damaged, which makes the players particularly vulnerable to all diseases affecting the brain.
The second reason is the very nature of sports and competitiveness. Not only are athletes evaluated based on their efficiency much more than people in other professions, but their performance is generally publicly available and subject to daily professional and (especially) lay criticism. The value of an athlete in terms of their effectiveness also changes much faster and easier than a person's value in other occupations.
A particularly interesting theory was put forward by the Australian psychologist Trent Hammond. The concept of sports is such that, as a rule, there is only one winner. Even in, for example, the final race at the Olympics, there is only one winner. Those who win silver and bronze medals are only the best among the losers.
This is especially problematic for women. It is often not enough for women to win first place because they still feel that their success does not have the same value as a man's success. The male world champion is always simply the world champion. The female world champion in sports is always the female world champion.
All the reasons listed so far can be summed up in one reason that is considered the leading cause of depression in elite sports. That reason is called athletic identity.
Identity of a superhero in a culture that accepts nothing less
There are a number of sociological, anthropological, and psychological studies that show that we do not think of athletes as real people. English psychologist Kitrina Douglas goes a step further and says that athletes rarely think of themselves as real people.
Their life's mission that is built around sports shapes their identity as athletes, not as people with real problems and emotions. The problem arises the moment an athlete crosses the line between being a real person and being a superhero who the whole world knows only as an athlete.
We live in a society that nurtures a superhero cult, and the superheroes of our generation are the best athletes in the world. They readily accept such a role because they have dedicated their entire lives to it, but sooner or later they also start feeling its futility. The moment someone better, faster or taller appears, they are no longer superheroes. And if they're not superheroes, they're nothing.
This was best described by Ronda Rousey, a former UFC champion. Her mental breakdown escalated in a talk show when she cried in the middle of a broadcast at the memory of her defeat from Holly Holm: "Honestly, I was sitting there, and I wanted to kill myself. What am I if not this (champion)? I'm nothing."
Over 70% of all athletes report they experience depression only after they retire. Some manage to get better and live a normal life through a combination of therapy, social support, and luck. Others indulge in drugs and alcohol, and even if they do not kill themselves, they die somewhere far from the spotlight to which they have been accustomed all their lives, completely alienated from the world. Because how can they feel like a part of the world if people dismiss their problems and feelings by saying they wouldn't mind dealing with the same issues if they had the same paycheck?
Sports psychologist: Up-and-coming athletes especially face pressure
Sports psychologist Sanja Petric believes that the problem occurs at a much earlier stage:
"Nowadays, more and more pressure is being put on athletes. By that, I don't mean only on professional athletes, but also on the less known ones who are labeled as up-and-coming. The word 'depression' is something that is present, but rarely talked about in sports because it does not fit the perfect image of an athlete. For this reason, we are rarely contacted by athletes with such problems. In over three years of work as a sports psychologist, I had only one case of depression in an athlete, and that person waited two years to tell me she struggled with depression. She waited that long because she often heard comments such as "you're fine, it'll pass, you don't need a psychologist, you're not crazy." This indicates the importance of this problem and the need to raise public awareness," she says.
The problem of depression is primarily cultural. We live in a society that wants to see all the positive sides of elite sports, and absolutely ignore all the negative ones. We also live in a society in which there is no greater shame than admitting that you need professional help of a psychiatrist or psychologist.
People who work in sports should be even more responsible than the public, especially those who raise young athletes - coaches, sports psychologists, and other professionals who must help athletes to never stop being real people, no matter how good athletes they are.