Michael Landsberg On Why We Need to Say the Word ‘Suicide’ More
For 18 years, he was known for challenging the biggest names in sports. Now, he’s challenging the biggest stigma attached to them.
Michael Landsberg suffers from depression. But for close to a decade, he chose not to talk about it publicly — as he thought nobody would care. An exchange on ‘Off The Record’ changed all of that, as his mental health was brought into the spotlight, and he quickly realized the impact his voice could have. He now considers his calling to be shedding mental health of its stigma.
His eye-opening 2013 documentary, “Darkness and Hope: Depression, Sports and Me,” earned a Canadian Screen Award nomination, and opened the door for him to launch not-for-profit SickNotWeak — an organization that strives to re-frame discussions around mental health, and prove just how tough mental health sufferers are.
Landsberg opened up about his personal battle with depression, his journey with SickNotWeak, and why be he believes we need to confront the stigma head-on.
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GRANDSTAND CENTRAL: It was just the NHL’s Trade Deadline, without a doubt a stressful day for all those involved. What should the league do to help these players deal with these big transitions and potential life changes?
Michael Landsberg: Do you mean the shock of a guy like Ryan Spooner of the Boston Bruins? Saturday night he plays a game against the Leafs, and he’s part of a team that’s looking to go deep in the playoffs. Then Sunday, he gets traded to the New York Rangers, and all of the sudden, everything he was thinking about is disappearing. Is that what you were referring to?
GSC: Yes.
ML: There’s not a lot you can do to prepare people for that. Since players make a certain amount of money, the perception, at the very least, is that you’re buying some of their pain. But that’s the nature of the game. That’s the nature of being a player. That’s the relationship between the owners and players. The collective bargaining agreement allows you to do that. It’s crappy, but it’s perhaps the only way.
When you announced on OTR that you suffered from depression, what brought you to that point?
I suffered from depression since about ‘99 and it wasn’t until 2009 when I first talked about it on OTR. That means there was a ten-year period where I suffered but never spoke about it on TV. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t speak about it. Everybody in my life knew — my friends, my family and even the people I worked with. I never thought anybody would care. I thought it would be, “Oh poor, Michael. He’s arrogant, he’s cocky, and now he’s a complainer too.” That’s what I thought I would get. I never saw the value in it.
Then in 2009, having coming off a terrible year for me, and for my depression, Stéphane Richer is a guest on OTR and I think to myself, “Well, I read that he suffered from depression in the 90s.” So I thought a good question for him would be, “How are you doing with your depression?” It’s not like I was trying to do anything good for mankind. I just thought it was an interesting question.
To get him to talk about it, I had to talk about it myself — which didn’t bother me — I didn’t care. So we go on the air and maybe talk for a minute and a half. Then I find out the next day, from the reaction we received, that it was life-changing for some people that were watching. And that’s what motivated me, it changed my life. Imagine you find out that you have this illness that’s taken a lot away from your life and all you had to to make a difference in other people’s lives is to share your illness. Sharing my illness always came easy to me. It was not like I was ever ashamed, I was never embarrassed of the stigma. I just never spoke about it on TV because I thought no one would care. Since then, I’ve found that the more I talk about it, the more of a difference it makes in people’s lives. And it’s the easiest thing in the world for me. No effort, but the payoff is huge.
#SickNotWeak is a very different approach to mental health awareness, challenging the stigma in a confrontational way. Where does that mentality come from, and why did you choose to approach it that way?
I’ve always been confrontational. I’ve always tried to force people to give the answer that they have inside of them; not just the answer they want to give me. That’s always been my nature and I found that when it comes to mental health, there’s a massive cover-up by society. When I go to speak to a crowd of 500 people, I say, “How many of you have been touched by mental illness — either through your own experience or about someone or someone you care about?”, and 99 per cent of people raise their hand. So how is it that this touches so many of us, yet it’s the least talked about illness on the planet?
How could it be that this thing that devastated us, devastates families, splits-up marriages and ends lives, how could it not be talked about? I bring a certain anger to this, a certain militancy. Going a corporate way, saying things in a sanitized way, it hasn’t worked in the past. It’s time to use different language, a different tone, and more of a sense of urgency. Not to hope that people will change their opinion about mental illness, but to demand it.
Did any athlete ever reach out to you off the record, to get help or at least talk about what they’re feeling?
I’ve heard from people that said, “I’m not ready to share this publicly, but I want to share it with you, because I know that you’re honest. That you’re not going to expose something I don’t want to share.” The last thing I’m going to do is judge someone, because if I judge somebody else, I’d be judging myself. So those types of conversations are incredibly rewarding for me. Whether it’s someone who’s famous or equally, someone who’s not. Someone who says, you know, “I drive a bus in Kelvington, Saskatchewan and I suffer from mental illness, but I can’t tell my boss because I’m embarrassed or ashamed. So what do you think I should do?” I hear that question, at least, once a day.
When you were starting up SickNotWeak, you did an interview with ‘The American Gangster’ Chael Sonnen. Before the interview, many saw Chael as a prototypical ‘tough guy’. How did talking to Chael help change the perception of mental health?
The whole point is to find people that people would say, “There’s no way that person suffers from a mental health challenges, or there’s no way this guy sees mental illness as more than a weakness.” So when you can find people who are received as being really strong, who are really strong people, but have the view that mental health is a sickness not a weakness, that’s the most powerful way to change their opinion. When you find someone that’ll go, “Wow, really? Chael Sonnen thinks that?” that’s really cool, because that will get other people who are struggling to come out and say, “Well, hey, if Chael Sonnen sees it that way, maybe I could share this with other people around me and I won’t be judged.”
Going forward, what do you think the sports world will have to do to end the stigma of mental health in the locker room? Especially in sports like hockey, where in a sense, players are taught to be thick-skinned. If they’re not, they usually face the wrath of the media, the fans, and sometimes even their own teammates.
The sports world is no different than any other industry. The stigma is present in every industry. You talk about Bay Street where traders live, where employers live. The stigma in those areas is just as great as it is in hockey. I mean how many CEOs of companies will go out and say, “I gotta take time off work, because I’m struggling with a mental illness?” They would never say that, because they fear that perception of weakness. The way to attack something in the locker room is identical to the way it needs to be done in large law firms. The way it has to be done on Bay Street with the day traders. The way it needs to be done in schools where people are afraid to have their principal find out that they’re struggling. In every aspect of our lives, the stigma defines how people see themselves and their mental illness. The key to that is to change that across the board. The only way to do that is from sharing. The only way to really make an impact is to get people who are perceived as being very strong to talk about their struggles with mental health.
Do you ever envision a world where athletes can come out and say they have mental health issues and not face some sort of judgement, brought forth by the stigma of mental health?
Sure, I see that. I don’t see that in the near future. I probably won’t see that in my lifetime. But I see that in the same way that if you would have said to someone in the 1950s, “Do you ever see sex education being taught in schools the way math is taught in schools, with the same level of confidence that nobody refrains from talking about math? Do you ever see sex education being that way?” People in the ’50s and ’60s would have said, “No way.” But now, the answer is yes, we do see it in that way. So I do think there is hope, but it all comes down to repetitive behaviour.
People need to be desensitized. If you say the word ‘suicide’ to a room filled of people that have never discussed suicide, they’ll be shocked, they’ll retreat, they’ll be very uncomfortable. But if you say it every day for a year, at the end of that year, all of the sudden, they won’t be shocked. They won’t be uncomfortable. And they won’t retreat. The same way that you say to a class that they’re going to talk about hormone control, and to the guys, we’re going to tell you to put on a condom. People would be really uncomfortable about that, but if you do it long enough, they’re not uncomfortable anymore.
