UK Edition
Gabby Logan: When it comes to mental health, we all need to talk
Gabby Logan has intimate experience of the emotional damage that can be caused when mental health issues are not properly addressed.
The BBC sports presenter knows all too well how problems can grow and fester if they are not spotted and confronted early.
Some 25 years ago, in the garden of the family home in Leeds, in the middle of a kickaround with their father, her brother Daniel Yorath dropped down dead. He was just 15, stricken by an undiagnosed heart condition.
For Gabby’s parents the pain was unimaginable. A promising young footballer, recently signed by Leeds United, the club where his father Terry had made his name, for them the boy was the very embodiment of the future. His loss was unfathomable. And, Logan believes, the way her parents reacted to his death was instructive indeed.
“Mum spoke to counsellors, priests, she talked and talked about it and eventually reached an accommodation,” she recalls.
“Dad was very different. He didn’t ask for help from anybody, he refused to speak to bereavement counsellors, avoided any kind of talking therapy, kept it all in. That’s where his journey became much more damaging. Soon, to dull the pain, he self-medicated. Basically, he drank more and more.”
He drank and, according to his daughter, he ran. “For Dad it wasn’t just his relationship with my mum going wrong, being at home physically made him sad, he couldn’t cope with the memories. He chose to go to Beirut [where he coached the Lebanese national side for two years from 1995-97]. It many ways it was a good match. It was a country that was then shot to bits, trying to rebuild. And there was my dad doing the same. He really enjoyed his time there, enjoyed learning the cultural difference. But when he came home it became pretty clear he had not solved anything. The thing is, you can’t run away from things. If you don’t stop and deal with them, they will always come back.”
Her father’s decline reached its nadir in 2004. His marriage long since a casualty of shared tragedy, he was driving home one night from a lengthy drinking session.
His car mounted the central reservation, knocking over a pedestrian, causing them comprehensive injuries. Three times over the limit, he only escaped a custodial sentence because the police psychiatrist – the first therapist he had spoken to since his son’s death – reckoned him to be a suicide risk.
His daughter believes it was his history in football that prevented him from seeking help earlier. “I actually think his problem of not communicating goes back to his early experience. At 15 he left home in Cardiff and went to play football in a new city, Leeds, where he didn’t know anyone, living in digs. That’s really tough when you’re just a kid. But in a staunchly macho sporting environment, how could he put his hand up and say he wasn’t feeling good? How could he admit it to anyone? It was the 1970s, even to show hint of that, you would have no chance of progressing in the game. The model was then set for him: keep it all in.”
It was, perhaps, an attitude more prevalent in team sports than individual. Logan herself had been an international gymnast, representing Wales in the Commonwealth Games. And, unlike her father, she believes the experience she gained in her sport helped her cope with the loss of her brother.
“I loved training, but when it came to competition I was riddled with nerves, it caused me great anxiety,” she reveals.
“I spoke at length to a sports psychologist who helped me with mental tools to address the issue. I wouldn’t say I ever came to enjoy competition, but I learned how to control my emotions and not feel overcome. I took that with me when Daniel died. I was like my mum, I talked to people. I’ve always had a couple of people in my life, including a guy who mentored me through my early broadcasting career. He was somebody I felt I could talk to whenever I felt I was insecure.” And having someone to talk to, she believes, is “the number one thing”.
The earlier the conversation is held, the better. “My husband Kenny has an apt expression for this. Whenever we have a problem he says we shouldn’t nip it in the bud, we need to nip it before it even becomes a bud.”
It is an approach she is encouraging as part of World Mental Health Day. She wants people to be more alert and open in the workplace, not just about their own insecurities, but in spotting those in others. And she believes sport has a unique role in encouraging us all to talk.
“I know from my dad’s experience that sport was very slow to understand the issues. You only had to look at how Stan Collymore was ridiculed, with people saying ‘how could someone on £20,000 a week be depressed?’ But I think sport has come to realise that material wealth has nothing to do with mental health. And more to the point it has come to realise that having someone mentally fit is as important to their performance as getting them physically ready.”
She adds that sport can lead the conversation about mental health. It cuts through socio-economic barriers in a way no other walk of life can.
“Sport is synonymous in the public mind with strength, even the language we use celebrates sports people’s mental ability, whenever we talk about winners invariably we talk about mental toughness. So when people in that environment who we admire so much can say, hey I need help, then for the rest of us there is no reason to feel shame in doing the same.”
As for her father, she believes even he has begun to recognise the power of talking. “I remember about five years ago he came to stay with us and I finally got him to talk to someone. I introduced him to doctor. After a few weeks of that he conceded it would have been valuable if he had seen someone earlier. Though actually when I look back on his life, it was way before Daniel died that it would have been helpful for him to talk about his childhood. The fact is, we all need to talk.”
Gabby will be hosting Legal & General’s Not a Red Card Forum at Twickenham Stadium on 19th October, where the worlds of business and sport will be sharing techniques to boost the mental wellbeing, engagement and performance of individuals and teams.