Spare us the retirement stuff, Ronnie

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to tire of the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan’s constant threats to retire from the game.

For those of you who have never heard of O’Sullivan, he is regarded by many experts as the greatest player who ever drew a cue. An amazing talent with a touch of genius.

And because he is a genius, it therefore follows that he will have demons, dark places, where his mind goes from time to time.

Well, I can relate to that. At least the dark places bit.

O’Sullivan’s main demon is mental illness and I know all about that, having spent a lifetime battling soul-destroying depression and anxieties.

I know all about the places you can go, how dark and painful they can be and how sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact an oncoming train.

And what’s more, I have known many others who have been similarly afflicted to varying degrees.

Some get by, courtesy of therapy or prescription drugs (my own route of choice and necessity) and others don’t and haven’t.

I have friends and acquaintances who have not managed quite so well and in extreme cases some have taken their own lives. Off the top of my head, five people who I knew very well have killed themselves. I didn’t realise it was that many until I seriously thought about it.

O’Sullivan has gone public with his illness and I thank him for doing that. It says to many people that they are not alone, that their position in society has no bearing on the sometimes crippling effects of mental illness.

But it also reminds me that there is precious little help out there for sufferers.

Yes, there is basic counseling for those who suffer mild or even middling conditions and there are always drugs to kill the worst pains. But that’s as far as it goes.

Mental illness remains the great unknown. A therapist told me that in his experience only one in ten people with mental illness are known to the health service. The rest presumably muddle on and get by in their different ways.

And I’ve been there.

I must have seen a dozen or more therapists and counselors and even once a doctor who was referred to a Mr, meaning he was not an ordinary doctor.

It has usually worked to some extent or other but it never goes away.

Most of us do not live the lives of wealthy sportsmen and women who can work when they choose to, as O’Sullivan says he did, in order to pay his children’s private school fees. We get by the best we can without any such option.

I read also that O’Sullivan is fortunate, and wealthy, enough to have access to the eminent sports psychologist Steve Peters who he credits for getting to the green baize in the first place.

In the post Thatcher society where so many still measure success by how much money they have, there is no point in knocking O’Sullivan for having the resources to buy better medical care for himself in the same way that he buys privileged education for his children.

There’s nothing illegal about it. He earns a fortune through his brilliant snooker and he spends the money in the way he chooses. Fair enough.

Personally, I don’t agree with David Cameron’s assertion that he wants to “spread privilege”. For me, it’s about extending the equality of opportunity for the many, not handing them privileges, presumably thanks to the patronage of the privileged.

It’s true that money cannot always buy you perfect health. You only need to look at the passing of Steve Jobs to see that. But in non fatal conditions, like mental illness, some people can buy better mental health.

Good luck to Ronnie O’Sullivan.

I applaud his strength in overcoming mental illness to achieve great heights in his chosen field.

And regardless of any superior treatment and help he is able to buy, it won’t take away the fundamentals of his illness. Mental illness is, in my experience, for life.

But for the majority of ordinary folk and working when it suits us, wrapping it all in is not an option. If I threaten to retire, I suspect my employer would be only too glad to hold open the door for me!

O’Sullivan has his demons, they cannot be underestimated and we must always take them into account.

But please spare us the retirement stuff.

The effects of mental illness must be very damaging to the economy, never mind society, but as a society and certainly as governments (of successive colours) we don’t seem to regard it as worth treating.