Marvin Sordell opens up about mental health

Sordell, a former Premier League striker, has enjoyed the highs of football, however he has recently opened up about the difficulties of living in the spotlight. 

“I wanted to make depression real so people can understand how you are fighting for control over yourself", he told 'The Guardian'. 

"Depression consumes you and sometimes you submit to it. Lots of emotions snowballed and became one big thing inside me. It felt like I was overtaken by another entity. It was then that I wrote Denis Prose.

“The poem follows my journey from the training ground to my home. I wanted to personify the emotion while the car represents my body. Inside the car we have myself and a passenger, Denis Prose, representing two sides of my consciousness. The journey starts on as a sunny day but it becomes dark and rainy. There is a shift in emotion and a struggle for power. Denis Prose takes charge. The poem ends in suicide because depression is so powerful it tells you: ‘This is the way out. I’ll take control and everything will be over.’”

Sordell spoke to people at one of his former clubs about his tangled emotions. “I said I’m missing my friends and family. But I told them I still wanted to be there because playing football was all I wanted to do. The moment you go onto the pitch the depression disappears. But the problems were getting worse because I wasn’t being picked. I had no release.”

“I have to say this because it’s important. Without naming names, at one of my clubs I was also seeing a doctor. She recommended I go to the Priory to recover properly. I said, ‘I don’t think you realise what I do for a living. It’s not possible to leave a football club for a few weeks. They paid good money to sign me. They pay me good money, so I can’t just go. But I’ll ask them.’

“I didn’t end up doing so. I wasn’t sure how they would react to me needing to go to the Priory and then, not long after, my mum phoned. She said someone from the club had called. They told her I was thinking of going to the Priory but the message was clear. ‘You can’t do that. You must focus on football.’ I don’t know how they knew. I was shocked.

“I was learning to play the piano and cook creatively. I was spending my free time being expressive. I would post interesting images on Instagram. It seemed better than going to bars every day. And he said to my mum I must stop playing the piano, stop cooking and focus on football. I thought: ‘Playing the piano is productive. I have to cook to eat. How can this be bad for my football?’ But that was their mentality towards me. People saw an attitude problem because I didn’t banter with the players and coaches. When I got home I often sat in the dark.

Sordell is currently playing for Burton Albion in League One.