Treat depression in holistic way: Monty Panesar

NEW DELHI: With

cricket

being played all year round and international cricketers staying on the road for eight to nine months, several players have begun addressing mental-health issues affecting them.

England

’s former left-arm spinner Monty Panesar is one. Battling depression, he went away from the game in 2014 (his last international match was in December 2013) due to his struggles with his mental well-being. But Panesar has turned a corner now and is aiming to make a comeback in county cricket next year.


“In international cricket, you are always living your life out of a suitcase. It is tough,” Panesar told TOI on the sidelines of the

Ekamra Sports Literature Festival

, where he launched his book ‘

The Full Monty

’ in India.

“What happens is you spend a lot of time on your own. In cricket, fans are the biggest stakeholders. They just see the sixes, the fours, the wickets, the heroes, the villains, but they don’t see that at the end of the game these cricketers go back to their hotel rooms and that’s when you are alone. Reality is different to what people think,” he added.

Looking back, Panesar said it was a time when he started doubting his abilities, started drinking too much; but since he was part of a “typical Punjabi household”, owning up to his mental health struggles was tough.

“I was in denial for a long time,” Panesar said. “I didn’t want to talk about it and eventually family and friends felt that you need to speak about it to someone. I went to a hypnotherapist. I could speak to him for just 5 minutes, the next 40 minutes I just didn’t know what was going on and then he said to me, ‘You are not well.’ I said, ‘Okay, how do we get out of this, how do I get better?’ Then we started to work on it and started the process of getting myself better.

“I didn’t want to go on medication. My advice with regards to mental health is to approach it in a holistic way. I would say not to go on medication on a long-term basis, maybe short-term.”

Continuing, the England spinner expressed, “There is massive pressure in international cricket. My strike-rates started to go up, it took me more balls to take a wicket. I was trying a lot harder and suddenly the pressure of all that gets on top of you.

“Family and friends were worried that Monty isn’t behaving the way he does. You think everything is okay, especially in our culture – South Asian communities – you just assume everything is fine, especially men. If you have abstract conversations about your thoughts with your friends and family, then people say ‘Kya baat kar rahe ho? Abhi kaam mein dhyaan do! (What gibberish are you talking? Focus on your work)."