If you watched US television adverts during the World Cup for any length of time one thing just kept leaping out. I’ve mentioned this before here, but it still seems both jarring and significant. Every third or fourth rotation in that endless daytime scroll, in between the Chicken Megadeth Hyper-Box Family Meal Deal, either side of David Beckham expertly consuming a light beer, is an advert for antidepressants.
The format for these is always the same kind of thing: contented, wholesome people throwing frisbees, or strolling through a small-town antiques fair, while a warm, honeyed, reassuring voiceover talks about how horrifying their lives are, with the suggestion that only a lengthy course of Smileothorium can solve this.
In another world there would be a call to study this phenomenon, to consider why a nation of such dazzling abundance and opportunity should also feel glazed, worthless and deprived of hope. But this is not that world. More than 50 million Americans have depression. This is demand and supply in action, a battle for market share in a £6bn industry. The US often worries about itself in its post-industrial age. What are we now? What can we still make? Where is the new frontier? Well, human misery is looking pretty hot right now.
The reason for talking about this here is that English football is doing a good thing this week. Between 4-14 September the Premier League is sponsoring the Together Against Suicide campaign. Harry Kane and Prince William have spoken warmly in support. The league is posting words of solidarity on its X account, which is probably not the best way to cheer yourself up if we’re being honest.
This is simple, useful messaging. It applies to people of any age, sex or background. But it applies in particular to men, and to middle-aged men, who are more likely to die by suicide than any other age group. Middle-aged men are more likely to experience depression and anxiety in those years. They can be hard to reach because this often happens out of sight or, most heartbreaking of all, without any indication there was even a problem.
It might be a little blunt in its styling. But what football is doing here is unequivocally good. Nothing else has the same level of reach and cut-through. If one person in the line of that message is touched by it, this seems like a happy outcome.
I think I have locus standi to talk about this. Everyone does. It’s universal. But I’m also unarguably a middle-aged man. I have two sons who are also now men. I have middle-aged male friends, many of whom are, with all due respect, a bit loopy. And like so many other people I’ve been down that road some of the way.
Life in Covid really did it for me. Exhaustion, isolation, the inescapable fact of having to carry on existing. Do you really have to, though? This kind of thing can creep into your mind like a shadow, just another idle thought. Until at some point you realise there’s a shadow in the corner of the room, a ghost in the chair, and it’s talking to you.
The fact is, it’s hard to be a man at any age. Or at least, it’s hard in a way that is distinct from other forms of hardness. And yes this statement might fail to draw an overwhelming wave of sympathy, but this is part of the problem. Pain comes for everyone. There’s no hierarchy of suffering. And male pain, male alienation is often carried around like a dead weight for exactly this reason.
Being able to talk about this stuff is the direct opposite of weakness. There is always someone willing to do this with you
As you get older this can be related to a sense of obsolescence. Men want to do stuff. There’s a kind of programming to feel useful, to serve some kind of function. Frankly, most middle-aged men would be happier if someone just gave them a big piece of wood and told them to saw it in half, then at the end of the day told them they’ve done a really good job, they’re good boys and everyone’s proud of them. Tomorrow you can come back and put it together again.
Instead it can feel like every part of the world is independently conspiring to make you feel like crap. Diminishing work, vanished usefulness, isolation, the way life can exhaust you quietly, without any obvious trauma. Men are not good at processing this. The key method, the strategy we’ve worked out over the years is: don’t process it at all. Carry on. Keep running through the red zone. Lads, it’s not a long-term plan.
I have two pieces of aged wisdom on this front. First, the obvious one. Embrace the feeling and talk about it. Sounds like a cliche. Is actually true. Feeling bad isn’t some deeper, truer version of you. The good stuff also exists and is just as real. Both will pass, and pass again.
Small things do help. Muscular, loud, well‑meaning men on the internet are actually right. Don’t eat rubbish. Get outside. Speak to other people. Remember that the sun also rises, that feeling terrible is also evidence of the ability to feel good. Prince William is right: being able to talk about this stuff is the direct opposite of weakness. There is always someone willing to do this with you, who will like and admire you even more as a result.
The second thing is: you do also have to fight. Those outmoded forms of masculinity – being stoic, resisting your own feelings – tend to get a bad rap. But everyone needs a bit of this. The problem is men are often not taught anything else to go with it.
Life is brutal. It will come for you. It is heroic to fight this, even more so when you’re suffering. Old English poetry is full of epic tales shot through with melancholy warriors weeping at the sadness of the empty hall. In Roman culture the ability to embrace melancholy and fear – as well as scything off the limbs of your enemies – was seen as a sign of great and crowning masculinity. Scipio burnt Carthage to the ground, then sank into a massive depression, at which point he was seen as even more masculine, even more thrillingly in touch with his depths.
Letting it out is strong. Would you like to be a Viking? Or a Roman hero with a sword? Well, those guys spent half their lives in a state of profound inner doubt, telling people all about it, then feeling so much more able to ride off on a horse and do something ostensibly useful.
There is something worth saying about sport in the middle of this. I was at Arsenal last weekend and before kick-off a bubbly and cheerful voice announced: “Suicide is NOT inevitable!” as though what we’re talking about here is having dandruff or not drinking enough water. The messaging is good. The messaging is great. The messaging is also, let’s be honest, an attempt to soothe the effects of the world in which big sport thrives and makes its fortunes. Is this a nice place?
It isn’t hard to work out why American TV is so full of adverts for antidepressants. Take a look at the stuff in between. Terrible, degrading food. Consumer goods you don’t need but must be made to crave. Pills to get you off that addiction to opioids we’ve already given you. Endless excitable messaging from corporations that secretly hate you.
Big Sport does not exist outside of this world. It is part of the same system. Oh, now you care about sad middle-aged men? The same ones who can’t afford to go any more, who feel alienated from what was once a bit of a lark and a chance to get together, whose brains must be subjected to the curated rage of the online idiot-scape?
The note of regret here is that sport still has so much power to be warm, to act as a source of contact. Witness for example the rush of love a few years back when Ben Stokes was able to talk about being depressed while simultaneously operating at his peak as England captain. It felt like a message no one had ever really sent in the same way, that you can feel like this and still be OK, or even heroically functional; that feeling all those things is really just a part of feeling.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
