There was an article in a recent issue of the Times relating to the response to Clarke Carlisle’s documentary “Football’s Suicide Secret”, which was aired in August.

The article revealed that, since the programmed aired, five Premier League footballers have sought help to deal with ‘depressive or suicidal thoughts’, and around thirty professional footballers have been in contact with Carlisle – it doesn’t say the reason for their contact but I think it’s safe to assume it was due to their being affected by his programme.

In his autobiography, published recently, Carlisle also reveals the extent to which he has suffered from depression, struggled with alcohol and attempted to take his own life.

So it would seem that professional football is nearing a crisis point when it comes to mental health. And to be honest, I’m not surprised.

In the article, Carlisle gives the opinion (I think taken from his book) that this situation is due to the fact that players are unprepared to seek alternative careers once their time in the game is over. This certainly goes some way to explain the situation, as all roles in sport are a ticking time bomb as injury or simply age – the average age for retirement in football is 35 – can finish a career early in comparison to most other professions.

However, I don’t think this is the main problem. Carlisle also says that “parts of being a footballer are incredibly glamorous. The amounts of money earned at the top end of the game, the sense of success, the commercials…”, and therein, to me, lies the issue.

Successful professional footballers are dropped in to a world of stuff – the measure of a player always seems (in the media at least) to be based on how much they earn or are worth. So you’ve trained for however many years to reach the peak of your game and are told you are worth £80 million, are given a healthy £300,000 a week and yet you’re still not happy.

Well of course not. Anything which is measured in monetary terms is doomed to a reality which is bottomless.

The realisation that obtaining vast amounts of stuff is not life’s purpose must hit these guys like the Titanic. And, if we use the seven year cycle idea favoured in the What Men Do Guide, this realisation will most likely come around age 28 – when the end of their career is already looming and, as in many guys of that age, they’ve only just fully realised that they’re now an adult.

When looked at in this way, it’s no surprise that depression is a major issue in professional football. The closed nature of the game – by which I mean the lack of freedom to talk about anything that might make one seem in any way “unmanly” (whatever that means) – only exasperates the problem (although, by Carlisle’s speaking out, depression is already ahead of homosexuality).

So what’s the solution? The same

as depression elsewhere … fuck knows.

But surely a starting point is to heap a good dollop of Reality in to the game so that, once the glitter stops pouring in, footballers aren’t put in a position where they feel their Purpose has been stripped from them.

Football is just a game. And like any game, these guys need to embrace life outside of it.

And it may also help them to realise that, while they may be a Superman on the pitch, it’s ok to be a regular Clark Kent when they’re off it.