My unqualified respect goes to the Tottenham Hotspur footballer Richarlison who has said publicly that seeking psychological help “saved his life”. According to the BBC website, he said he was at “rock bottom” but therapy helped him to “turn things around. As a player who has an active voice, I tell people to seek help.” Despite what I am about to say, I commend his courage and honesty because, as he adds, “We know how prejudiced people are when they say they’re looking for [psychological] help. Thank god I’m not prejudiced about it any more.” Here’s the despite what I am about to say bit.
I am not sure Richarlison’s last sentence makes a great deal of sense, in all likelihood because English is his second language. My guess he means people are looked at in a negative way when they are struggling mentally in which case he’s partly right. And he’s partly right because actually it’s a societal thing. There’s more sympathy for people who suffer from mental health issues these days, at least from their fellow human beings. When it comes to institutions and some employers, that sympathy is non existent. The player’s argument, though well meaning, collides into a brick wall when he, rightly, tells people to seek help, because there isn’t any.
Now that’s hardly Richarlison’s fault because he sees the world through his own Brazilian prism. He cannot possibly know that for people who live in the country where he earns his living, they cannot access therapy as he can. For in the UK, mental health treatment doesn’t come for free. We have to pay for it and many people cannot afford to pay for it.
It’s why I always feel a bit of a fraud when I speak to people who are struggling and I urge them to contact their GP because I know what the GP will say: “There’s fuck all we can do for you.” There’s usually a few weeks of basic counselling available and some drugs, but that’s it. So unless you have completely lost your mind and you are sectioned, the help we urge you to seek doesn’t exist.
“I talk about it because it saved my life. I was at rock bottom. Only players know how much pressure we’re under, not only on the pitch but also off it,” he adds. I am not going down the road of “You call that pressure?” because it helps no one. Being rich in itself is not a vaccine against poor mental health, but having shed loads of money can buy treatment, which your average prole could never afford.
I welcome Richarlison’s comments because it reopens the discussion about mental health, at least until tomorrow when we can forget about it again. The boys means well in what he says and that’s as much as we can hope for. And it is hardly his fault that the help he urges others to seek isn’t really there.
