I didn't see the Freddie Flintoff show last week because I didn't choose to.

 

Did I miss anything?

 

The advert on TV just now is tremendous. The loser turning to dust in his shoes.

 

There was no doctors lines for depression in my day.

 

As Jerry Sadowitz correctly said in the Music Hall last year, Britain's gone gay.

 

Sportsman gets paid a fortune then goes into a black hole. Boo fucking hoo.

When exactly was your day because I know a 67 year old who was diagnosed with depression the early 70s?

more attention seeking nonsense from rocket eh?

 

ironic that mental health problems are something you have no sympathy for, given you come across as the kind of gibbering wreck who couldn't to tie his own shoes without breaking down in tears and hurling faeces at the ceiling.

more attention seeking nonsense from rocket eh?

 

ironic that mental health problems are something you have no sympathy for, given you come across as the kind of gibbering wreck who couldn't to tie his own shoes without breaking down in tears and hurling faeces at the ceiling.

Nice contribution. No attempt to engage. Just pish basically.

 

Who the fuck are you? Flattered as I am that you are able to comment on both my mental state and my posting history, I've never encountered anything you've ever said previously. You must be a particularly boring bastard.

 

On topic...

 

"Depression" being a "chemical imbalance"? Get te fuck. It's an industry nowadays that's become very profitable for many.

 

Weegies I can understand empathising with this shite. Jerry excepted. The sickie/invalidity claim frequency marks their lack of integrity.

 

I saw a dog with three legs going up Scolty Hill the day. This whippet-like creature might have had a reason to be depressed but no, it gone on with it, living and loving life to the full, sans the back right and tongue oot, panting and slavering with glee.

 

Svetlana in the Soprano's I might understand feeling a bit sorry for herself, especially when that bitch Janice hid her prosthetic but no, she's gets up, dusts herself down, has sex with a gangster, enjoys the odd glass of vodka and retains a wicked old sense of humour.

 

My own mental health defects that mark me as a raging sociopath are nothing to do with "depression". That's a cop out. I'm the real deal.

 

Interesting that I almost skipped watching a recording due to the sycophants reaction to his show on Twitter.

 

I found it rather self indulgent but of course they are people at the end of the day. The interesting paradox was reaching relative sporting excellence with such a fraglie mentality. I guess that depends on your definition of sporting excellence though.

 

 

 

All the "yes men" and hangers on that vanish over the end of a career surely can't be worth missing that much.

 

Assuming that it might be a factor.

I guess that depends on your definition of sporting excellence though.

I reckon earning over half a mill a year qualifies as excellence in his field. When someone pays you more than 20 times the annual average, that's excellence.

 

Good post. Definitions are key here. How do we define the "fragile mentality" that you refer to? I reckon this is way harder to capture.

 

Where there are grey areas, this is fertile ground for corporate shysters and con-men. The explosion of prozac and other uppers brings billions to the pharmaceutical industry yet the symptoms, causes and effects are largely undefined.

 

"I'm depressed" as an excuse to get off work doesn't wash with me. If you're mentally not strong enough to contribute, you're not strong enough to live. The gene pool would be greatly nourished by eliminating nanny who's in charge of the state. It's a cop out for the losers and the weak.

Agree re definition, I probably should have written the paradox between a strong mentality to reach the top and self doubt displayed by some of them . But these things are probably part of the same animal.

 

With regards to money, I guess it really can't buy you love. Unless you're fatjim. Although I really think there must be a comfort from absolute independent wealth rather than matrial posessions.

 

 

Money can buy you a gold-digger but when it's obvious that he's too thick to earn anything like a survivable wage after the career that provided the above-average income, the gold-digging bitch reckons it's time to check out and take the house and as much dough as she can.

 

Some might feel sorry for the man, fleeced by the cow, but surely it's the man's utter stupidity and inadequacy that results in him losing half his wealth to a woman who was always going to use him? It was his radar that was bust, an instinctius defunctum that cost him but it wasn't like he was left with fuck all. With a smidgeon of intelligence and some hard work and application, he might have seen the score, built a new career and found success by finding the real meaning of happiness.

 

Do we feel sorry for Gazza too? They had it all but were too up themselves to appreciate it, too divorced from the real world and too stupid to think that it would never end. Cunts like this are no different to any other stupid misguided fuck that walks the planet, other than the big houses and the flash cars. Depression, alcoholism, drug addiction or whatever they end up with are symptoms of their weaknesses and fundamental personality disorders, personalities that aren't improved by material wealth and public adulation.

It has been a strategy of mine to throw a bomb into a room and then pick the fallout. As some of you have recognised and know. It's an ISD and it works every time. I can't stand Paul Merson for the exact same reasons I can't stand Freddy Flintoff, very different reasons why I can't stand Calderwood.

 

Being serious for a change on this serious subject, of course there is proven correlations between depleted seratonin and dopamine levels and depression so of course there is chemical imbalance in some. I saw a very good lecture by a Stanford professor on this subject, a weirdy beardy guy with brilliant lecture skills. But science doesn't have all the answers despite its ego saying that it should.

 

Another Stanford professor, Carol Dweck is doing wonderful work on fixed and growth mindsets, some are considering the question holistically and others are examining the correlations between mental health and the food chain so when considering the questions of the nature of depression, it is clear that the jury is out. Our own government are chronically underfunding mental health and this imbalance needs to be sorted. One of my old clients' father was a retired GP who said that he wasn't equipped to do his job at the end. He was trained to deal in physiological disorders whereas a growing number of his patients were suffering psychological issues.

 

My personal experience of depression isn't deep. Only once did my wife (30 years together this year) ever suggest I might be slightly or mildly depressed and another once or twice in my life in hindsight might I have been similarly listless. I was fortunate that it didn't last very long but enough to let me understand how joylessness can persist as a condition and how when it's black, you don't see the grey let alone the white. In retrospect, any depression I may have felt were always when I wasn't happy in work and lacked purpose, not being able to see what I wanted to be doing with sufficient clarity. I was lucky in that being an optimist, however dormant it might have been at certain times, I always trusted it and therefore trusted myself.

 

A great exchange at the start of the film I watched tonight involved war survivors. One said that all the men who he knew had died were afraid of dying and all the survivors never considered that they would die. This could go tangentially into areas of fate and consciousness and morphic resonance and the fascinating subjects that Rupert Sheldrake and particularly Malcolm Gladwell write about but seriously, what is the nature of depression?

 

Whilst the pharmas make big money out of it and the government continue to neglect it, I don't trust that research into this field has been as comprehensive as it should have been. They're treating the effects, the symptoms and failing to get to the core of the causes. It's not black and white, this. But where the world has no problem accepting the arbitrary and somewhat random classification of the population as binarily being an optimist or a pessimist, I feel that Dweck's work will impact on this question as it already is impacting on management, training, coaching, recruitment and education, undoubtedly for big benefits for humankind.

From a personal perspective depression is something I've lived with and suffered over a significant time. Mrs. MBT no2 suffered long term and refused any help. She was an intelligent woman, but her view was "I know what they'll ask, I know how to answer so they won't put me in hospital, I don't need help" About a month or so after her suicide I saw a Stephen Fry programme about bi-polar disease and they showed a woman described as suffering from the "most severe case" the doctor on the show had seen and it was like looking at my wife.

 

For me personally, I have spent years always being the cheerful optimist and just burying my hurt, my fears, my worries and stresses (and self medicating with alcohol) until in 2014 I admitted myself to an outpatient programme to treat my alcohol issues, but still ignored to underlying cause.

 

Ultimately everything came to a head about 3 weeks ago and I ended up in hospital being treated for my depression and anxiety and, this time, I'm receiving ongoing help from 3 doctors/psychiatrists and have got medication that seems to work. It's early days and baby steps for now.......

 

However, I still feel uncomfortable with the stigma of suicide from Mrs. MBT#2, and from the stigma that still attaches to mental health issues here (just like in Scotland I guess). Only a few of my closest friends and family know, the doctor's letter to the school re medical leave of absence is similarly non specific about the reasons. I do wonder what the response would be like if I told people.......

Very brave of you to disclose online. Not necessarily the best outlet, a football forum, many might say but hey, you never know, someone on here might say something that can help, hopefully.

 

For me, I'll just state the obvious, something you've heard many times before no doubt.

 

There is no "stigma" or blame that you can attach to yourself for another's condition and ultimate suicide. Tragic as that is and perfectly understandable that you do ask yourself what you might have done differently, it is not right for you to take personal responsibility nor to feel any guilt over it.

 

Now I'll say it in a NE way.

 

That was a cunt of a thing to have happened and my deepest sympathies to you for having to live through a massive tragedy, one of the worst imaginable.

 

Now I'll state the obvious again.

 

You have to be strong and strength will come through personal understanding, particularly of your underlying issue.

 

Now I'll quote the bible.

 

Whoever knows the All but fails to know himself lacks everything.

The Gospel according to St Thomas 67

 

Good luck to you. Baby steps indeed, one at a time.