Football has a message worth conveying: men need to talk about their pain | Barney Roney

IIf you’ve watched American television commercials during the World Cup for any length of time, one thing has always stood out to you. I’ve mentioned this here before, but it still feels both jarring and significant. Every third or fourth turn in this endless afternoon scroll between Chicken Megadeth Hyper-Box family dinners, flanked by David Beckham skillfully chugging a light beer, is an advertisement for antidepressants.

The format for them is always the same: happy, healthy people throwing frisbees or strolling through a small-town antiques fair while a warm, sweet, reassuring voiceover talks about how terrible their lives are, with the suggestion that only a long course of Smileothorium can solve the problem.

In another world there would be a call to study this phenomenon, to wonder why a nation with such dazzling abundance and opportunity should also feel glassed-in, worthless and hopeless. But this is not that world. More than 50 million Americans suffer from depression. It’s supply and demand at work, a battle for market share in a £6 billion industry. The US often worries about itself in the post-industrial era. What are we now? What else can we do? Where is the new frontier? Well, human suffering is looking pretty acute right now.

The reason we’re talking about this here is because things are going well in English football this week. From 4 to 14 September the Premier League is sponsoring the ‘United Against Suicide’ campaign. Harry Kane and Prince William expressed their warm support. The league is posting words of solidarity on their X account, which probably isn’t the best way to lift your spirits, to be honest.

This is a simple and useful message. This applies to people of any age, gender and background. But this is especially true for men and middle-aged men, who are more likely to die by suicide than any other age group. Middle-aged men are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety during these years. They can be difficult to reach because it often happens unnoticed or, most heartbreakingly, without any indication that there is a problem.

Perhaps his style is a little rough around the edges. But what football is doing here is definitely good. Nothing else has the same level of coverage and openness. If it affects even one person in the line of this message, it seems like a happy outcome.

I think I have a place to talk about this. Everyone does it. It’s universal. But I am also undoubtedly a middle-aged man. I have two sons who also became men. I have middle-aged male friends, many of whom, with all due respect, are a little crazy. And like many other people, I’ve been down this path for a while.

Living through Covid has really helped me. Fatigue, isolation, the inevitable fact of having to continue existing. But do you really need it? These things can creep into your mind like a shadow, like another idle thought. Until at some point you realize that there is a shadow in the corner of the room, a ghost in a chair, and he is talking to you.

The fact is that it is difficult to be a man at any age. Or at least this hardness is different from other forms of hardness. And yes, this statement may not generate an overwhelming wave of sympathy, but it is part of the problem. Pain comes to everyone. There is no hierarchy of suffering. And men’s pain, men’s alienation is often carried with them like dead weight precisely for this reason.

As you get older, this can be associated with feelings of aging. Men want to do things. There is a kind of programming that allows you to feel useful, to perform some function. Honestly, 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, and at the end of the day told them that they did a really good job, that they were good boys and everyone was proud of them. Tomorrow you can come back and put everything back together.

Instead, it can feel like every part of the world is independently conspiring to make you feel like crap. The diminishing work, the disappearance of usefulness, the isolation, the way life can wear you down quietly without any obvious trauma. Men don’t know how to process it. The key technique, the strategy we’ve developed over the years: don’t process it at all. Continue. Continue running through the red zone. Guys, this is not a long term plan.

I have two old pieces of wisdom on this matter. First, the obvious. Accept this feeling and talk about it. Sounds like a cliché. This is actually true. Feeling bad is not some deeper, truer version of you. Good things also exist and are just as real. Both will pass, and will pass again.

Little things really help. The muscular, loud and friendly men on the internet actually have a point. Don’t eat garbage. Go outside. Talk to other people. Remember that the sun also rises, that the feeling of horror is also evidence of the ability to feel good. Prince William is right: being able to talk about it is the exact opposite of being weak. There will always be someone who wants to do this to you, and as a result you will love and admire you even more.

Second: you will have to fight too. These outdated forms of masculinity—stoicism, resistance to one’s own feelings—tend to get a bad rap. But everyone needs a little of it. The problem is that men are often not taught anything else related to this.

Life is cruel. It will come for you. It is heroic to fight this, especially when you are suffering. Old English poetry is full of epic tales, laced with melancholic warriors weeping in the sadness of an empty hall. In Roman culture, the ability to overcome melancholy and fear, and to cut off the limbs of one’s enemies, was seen as a sign of great and distinguished masculinity. Scipio burned Carthage to the ground, then sank into a deep depression, at which point he was perceived as even more courageous, even more excitingly in touch with his depths.

Letting it out is powerful. Would you like to become a Viking? Or a Roman hero with a sword? Well, these guys spent half their lives in a state of deep inner doubt, telling people all about it, and then they felt much more capable of riding a horse and doing something supposedly useful.

Amidst all this, there is something worth saying about sports. Last weekend I was at Arsenal and before kick-off a cheerful and cheerful voice announced: “Suicide is NOT imminent!” as if we are talking about dandruff or not drinking enough water. The messages are good. The messages are excellent. This message is also, let’s be honest, an attempt to mitigate the consequences of a world in which big-time sports thrive and make their fortunes. Is this a good place?

It’s not hard to understand why American television is so full of advertisements for antidepressants. Take a look at what’s in between. Horrible, degrading food. Consumer goods that you don’t need but need to be made to crave. Pills that will stop you from being addicted to opioids that we have already given you. Endless worrying messages from corporations that secretly hate you.

Big sport does not exist outside of this world. This is part of the same system. Oh, now you care about sad middle-aged men? The same ones who can’t afford to go anymore, who feel alienated from what was once some kind of fun and chance to get together, whose brains must be subjected to the curated fury of an online space of idiots?

The note of regret here is that sport still has a tremendous power to warm us up, to act as a source of contact. Witness, for example, the rush of love a few years ago when Ben Stokes could talk about depression while at the same time being at the peak of his career as England captain. It felt like a message that no one had ever sent in the same way: you can feel this way and still be fine or even functioning heroically; that feeling all these things is really just a part of feeling.

• In the UK and Ireland the Samaritans can be contacted freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat online at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the Lifeline crisis helpline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.