An amazing and touching piece of writing from Waterford’s Wayne Hutchinson helps to break down the stigma around mental health.
Waterford hurler Wayne Hutchinson has battled with depression in silence for many years, but he has taken to his blog to open up publicly about how he has faced it and how difficult it has been for him since he was diagnosed.
Us Irish men rarely take the time to speak publicly or even privately about mental health, but Hutchinson’s incredibly personal and inspirational piece of writing, which appears on his blog, is a touching and affecting piece that gives some insight into what he has been going through that will hopefully be able to help anyone else who feels the same.
At age 18, he was diagnosed as suffering from depression, and he speaks of a night last January where he entered a particularly dark place and began to think that he “had reached a point in my life where there was only one way to end it all”.
Thankfully, as she had years earlier when he turned to her for help and she took him to be diagnosed, Wayne’s mother was there, even though she didn’t know it, and he decided not to continue down that road. The full and emotional story is well worth a read, in particular for anyone who has ever suffered or thinks that they might be struggling with any mental health issues.
Wayne speaks openly and frankly about the many problems he faced, and in particular feeling that, although he was alright from the outside, on the inside he was struggling. As a hurler he was incredibly fit, he had a good network of friends and his family were happy and supportive, but something simply was not right. He questioned his own right to be feeling the way he did, and as he puts it himself, “Sure what had I to be griping about?”.
“Depression is very difficult to explain to anyone that’s not had it”, writes Wayne. “If you’ve not had it, I really feel there aren’t sufficient words to describe its horror. I’ve had a lot of injuries playing sport down through the years – a broken wrist, two hip operations, two groin operations and a broken nose. However none of those physical ailments come close to the mental torture of depression.”
His experience is surely similar to that of others who have felt isolated and alone when dealing with mental health difficulties, and Wayne himself stated on Twitter that he hopes his story can help anyone else out there who feels that they have to deal with these issues on their own.
If Wayne’s story helped you or you want to reach out to him, you can find him on Twitter, or if you just want to talk about anything that you might be going through, then there’s always help available from ReachOut.ie who specialise in mental health issues, and SpunOut.ie.
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