David Beckham and mental health.....am I missing something?

[maudavery]

This is what DB in convo with Prince William has said about talking about one's feelings:

I made a mistake in '98 [getting sent off against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup] and the reaction at the time was pretty brutal.
"If social media was around when I was going through that time, it would have been a whole different story. But I was lucky, I had a support system within Manchester United, the manager, and obviously family.
"But did I feel it was okay at the time to go to someone and say I need help? No, because it was a different era, and I just felt that I had to keep it all in and deal with it myself.

So he cocked up, took flak for it and then "had to deal with it himself", although he acknowledges he had a lot of support. Is this so bad? Isn't this just taking responsibility? Isn't there a lot to be said for this kind of stoicism? Whereas now everything pathologised and we need therapy for everything.

I take his point about social media and agree it can be poisonous especially for younger people but I don't really think his point about having to deal with things himself is so terrible.

Looking back, maybe the death threats and so on were a little OTT

Maybe a little OTT?

Wow.

Yeah, because threatening to kill someone you don't know over a fucking football game is not that big a deal.

Wtaf!

Reading this thread I’m not surprised there is still a stigma around poor mental health and people are scared to ask for help. A man had said he struggle during one of the worst backlashes I’ve seen by the British press and a good number of people choose to say he’s making it up/using it for attention/deserved it. My god.

So because he is a man he should just shut up and put up?

And we wonder why male suicide rates are high.

@noColinleftbehind

This from the man who, along with his family, flaunt every single aspect of their lives on social media

Yes! Brooklyn Beckham seems an aimless young man, instagramming his proposal to his girlfriend.

So what then? He isn't allowed to had depression or find death threats confronting and hard to deal with because he uses SM?

I think the OP is saying it's to DB's credit that he had the resilience to cope with that onslaught of personal abuse, knuckled down and turned his reputation around. Isn't DB saying it would have been much harder if, like now, there had been of social media?

@User87471643901065319

DB will do anything to get an undeserved knighthood keep in with the royals and in the public eye.

This. Absolutely this.

I think he is saying he kept it to himself and dealt with it, but even if it had got too much he didn't feel he could have got help/was ok to ask for help.

because @maudavery I think he point is that he feels he had to keep it in and there was no one to talk to and that was just about ok because he had support. But it was a struggle for him.

But if it had happened today (and it was amazingly brutal) he has said the added extra of SM would have made it next to impossible for him to deal with

God l remember this so well - he single handedly got the blame for us losing the world cup that year (never mind the fact we have only ever once won it). The backlash was shocking. Felt really sorry for him at the time.

Didn't we learn anything from Caroline Flack's death?

twitter.com/FootballMuseum/status/1013021919552122881/photo/1

He was a young lad who made a mistake and he was annihilated for it by the press and people burning effigies of him in the streets. I remember feeling so sorry for him at the time.
It's much the same as what happened to Caroline Flack recently...........

I think you’ve slightly missed his point maybe. Doesn’t he mean that what he went through, being demonised by the press etc and coping by himself was bad enough but now people are having to cope with that and also having to cope with everything being splashed all over social media too?

heartsonacake

In 2012 I had to wait a month for 6 weeks of cbt, more was offered but the therapist was leaving and I didn’t feel like starting with another as I had been getting help from friends and family with the main issue causing my stress and anxiety.

In 2019 dp has to wait 3 months for 6 weeks of cbt no more was offered when the 6 weeks was up even though it was still needed.

When was your treatment?

Yabu. He was really put through the mill.

I agree with this @cryalot2 "Everyone talks about awareness and support, the only thing is we are aware of it was and the fact it is made much worse by the lack of support and celebs going on about it.". I paid for 8 £40 sessions, and that was all I could afford. Nothing available on NHS.

In 2019 dp has to wait 3 months for 6 weeks of cbt no more was offered when the 6 weeks was up even though it was still needed

My young adult who was talking about suicide was having to wait for 12 weeks for a course of ‘talking it through’ telephone calls, that was about 2/3 years ago

I do sometimes think that talking about mental health, especially with young people/teens is sometimes counter-productive. I was talking about this with a friend the other day and we both felt that often at school, in the interests of trying to pre-empt any issues and trying to be seen as being 'on it' with mental health, they are actually making teens feel they 'should' have issues, when in fact they don't. For instance, my y10 daughter has coped very well with home-schooling during lockdown. Yet on the days she was invited into school recently quite a lot of time was spent in a 'mental health' session. Fine, if you had issues, but for her I think she felt she was odd, then, for not having issues- she almost had to create herself a problem in order to 'fit in'. It's the same with sexuality- it's become not cool to be straight- you have to be struggling with your sexuality or gender in order to be 'normal'.

I think football fans and the media were awful - they were hate crimes gained him and there were murder threats. I think without his family and close friends anyone would have been in a very bad way. This kind of mob ganging up is disgusting.

So no, I don’t think he deserved to ‘take responsibility’, he made a mistake, but the mob were going for a kill and I’m sure it’s mentally scarred him. I’m not a big DB fan but ‘we’ as a society need to take responsibility here, we bought the papers, read the media, we allowed it to happen.

That’s awful Rufus I must admit our gp’s office is much better than most.

Abuse to sports players is just beyond bonkers. I'm in wales and the stuff that gets directed at players going through a bad run of form is obscene. It's bad enough when it's just the press but you see players get piled on on social media, told they should never play again etc. Beckham might be a bit of an attention seeker but he's very right about that. I can't imagine having newspapers screaming 'drowsyDragon is shit' if I messed up at work.

People have threatened to kill Beckham's kids and all sorts. Of course it'll get to him, he's only human.

Also, I tried being 'stoic' and ignoring that I had mental health issues. I pushed myself too far and I ended up attempting suicide and having to drop out of uni. If you think that makes me a pathetic, weak little girl, I can't help you. Getting therapy and going on meds saved my life.

Also, threatening to kill footballers and their families is just fucking stupid. Everton are dreadful but you don't see me sending Gylfi Sigurdsson or Jordan Pickford death threats. They're just people.

No wonder men especially don’t speak out if some of the responses here are anything to go by. If David Beckham speaking out can make just one man seek help then surely that’s a great thing.

@DrowsyDragon Football fans' logic is 'they get paid loads of money so they should just suck it up and take the abuse'. I've seen that said about the racist abuse Raheem Sterling received. I'm pretty sure that if my boss told me to kill myself if I made a mistake on a job, or stood over my shoulder screaming abuse at me, I'd be miserable. Social media has made it even worse. Like, Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford have had racist abuse from their own fans, and Dejan Lovren had to leave social media because of the abuse he got. Footballers are just people. And it's close to home for me as an Everton fan because one of our former players was sectioned due to severe mental health problems - he was found wandering around near a busy road in a state - and another one was found by his wife one morning hanging from the roof of their garage.

When was your treatment?

Notverybright It was 2016; I waited 2 months. My CBT was extended until I was fully recovered; it went on for seven months. They said they could see it was working and I needed more time so they would continue.

I hadn’t left the house in roughly a decade before that treatment. After seven months of CBT I was fully recovered and working full time.

Like I said, I cannot fault the NHS. They were incredible. I’m not saying it’s the same everywhere, clearly it isn’t and that’s a shame, I was simply stating that that hadn’t been my experience.

Getting therapy IS a responsible thing to do for a lot of people.