It was seven years ago

by Rick Johansen

There’s a book, recently published, called Gary Speed: Unspoken, written by John Richardson, with the support and assistance of Speed’s widow Louise. I would imagine it will be a very difficult read, given the subject matter. To my astonishment, Speed hanged himself almost exactly seven years ago. If you had asked me to name a year, I’d have probably said three or four years ago, but seven?

Everything is shocking about the story. A young man, a Welsh footballing great, a talented young manager, a proud family man. What did he have to be depressed about? I ask the question merely to point out what a stupid question it is. Mental illness does not just trouble, and sometimes end, the lives of those with nothing.  It takes the lives of those who seem to have everything.

That no one seemed to know that Gary Speed suffered from what must have been crippling depression bears testament to his great strength, to his incredible determination to keep the illness from his family. It would have been better had he confided with his family and friends, sought help, sought treatment. He didn’t. He carried his illness into death. We may never know why.

There have been stories about why Speed may have become so ill. I do not wish to engage in tittle-tattle so I won’t repeat them. I make a more generic point: we need to create an environment where it is accepted that people can talk about their mental health, that indeed is is a perfectly normal thing to do. We need to extend the message that you attend your GP when your body isn’t right and by the same token, the exact same token, you attend your GP when your head isn’t right. However, there’s this stigma.

I do not buy what I consider to be a myth that stigmas about mental health have been broken down completely. As I pointed out in a previous blog, I still see people making ‘jokes’ about desperate conditions such as paranoia and OCD on a regular basis, but these illnesses – and I have known, and still know people with these illnesses – are life-destroying in every sense you can imagine. The same is true of depression.

Imagine going to bed at the age of 17, as apparently Speed did, and saying you didn’t want to wake up. This happened a full 25 years before he took his life. I do not know the depths of Speed’s depression, nor would I wish to compare it in anyway with my own black dog, but I can recall countless times when I thought just that, as well as times when I neither wanted to live nor die.  Perhaps, one countered the other so I took no further action, beyond relatively minor self-harm. I knew plenty of other Gary Speeds along the way, though.

I have lost count of the number of people I have known who killed themselves. One or two did, I always felt, seem prime candidates, such was the level of their illness, although it still shocked when they actually carried out the act. Others, well, it came out of a clear blue sky. Mostly, no one ever really knew what made them do it. Those who remain have to live with the terrible guilt for something that was in no way their fault. There is collateral damage everywhere.

For whatever reason, Gary Speed died with his demons untouched; his life ruined, his terrible illness ruining the lives of so many others. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Mental illness killed Gary Speed, our society created the conditions to allow him to take his own life. The weasel words of politicians are not enough. If his death is not to be in vain, we need to treat mental illness with the seriousness it deserves. We can change the world if we want to. To leave it like this would be truly unforgivable and yet totally unsurprising. After all, he died seven years ago and almost nothing has changed since then.

 

You may also like