I switched on the radio at 7.30am last Friday to hear Des Cahill reporting in his sports bulletin that Shamrock Rovers player Mikey Drennan “is taking a break from the game as he battles depression”. In an interview with the Irish Independent on the same day, the 22-year-old explained that he had returned home to play hurling with his club, James Stephens, and be among his family and friends.

Had he been physically injured with a calf strain or twisted knee, we might have heard about it before now. But until last Friday, mystery surrounded his recent absences from the Shamrock Rovers starting squad. When Manchester United defender Luke Shaw suffered a horrific leg break in a Champions League match last September, he tweeted from his hospital bed: “Thank you everyone for your messages, words can’t describe how gutted I am, my road to recovery starts now. I will come back stronger.”

Leaving Drennan’s candid newspaper interview aside, had Shaw, or any other player for that matter, suffered a serious bout of depression, would they tweet the words above? Well, Drennan actually could have plagiarised Shaw’s tweet and it would have been the most appropriate wording for what he is going through – the common denominator is pain. You ask anyone with depression and they would probably choose what Luke Shaw went through rather than what Mikey Drennan is going through. And yet, if we accept depression in the same way we accept physical injury, it can be a real healer.

Two or three years ago, I don’t think we would have read about Mikey Drennan or Bressie or Olivia O’Leary or Robert Troy and their battles with depression. But times are changing.

I wrote here before about how I think I might have suffered from depression many years ago. It was only when I stumbled across an article about it sometime after that I self diagnosed. And since then I have always taken the view that if you treat mental pain the same way you would treat physical pain, it can help declutter the agony of depression or anxiety, which lives off such fear and incontrollable desperation.

By focusing on it as something that is trying to eat you up, accept it is there, eyeball it down and treat it the same way you would if you were laid up with a sore back or fractured arm, it will combine as a tonic to flush away those demons. At least try it. Doing it with the help of others doubles the dose.

The most important line in Drennan’s interview is where he says: “I feel better that I am home, back around people who I love and who are looking after me and being there for me. I feel better now but there’s a long way to go to get better.”

Meanwhile, Luke Shaw is back in full training with Manchester United. CL

Helmet cams

I spotted a cyclist the other day wearing one of those helmet cams. He looked like a right pompous ass. Like a man possessed, he was zipping through the traffic with his bits bulging from his bright, showy, tight lycra with his silly looking helmet cam. I couldn’t help but think he is one of those cyclists who sets out each morning on the hunt to catch on camera some innocent motorist not showing him the respect his ego thinks he deserves, no doubt thinking to himself: “Don’t get in my way or I’ll post you on Facebook”. Get a life would you.

ends