One Man's Struggle with Depression

All kinds of people get help for depression; even people you would never suspect suffer from the disorder. At the Centennial Olympics in Atlanta, Derrick Adkins captured gold, running the 400-meter hurdles in 47.54 seconds. The photograph of Derrick as he stands beaming on the Olympic podium is a triumphant image. Yet this accomplished athlete was in a life-and-death struggle with depression.

During my glory years of track and field, Adkins says, I was very depressed. It was very severe; it wasn't just a mild case of having the blues, it was an illness.

Derrick recalls having very mild feelings of depression as far back as elementary school. It wasn't that bad, he recalls. I was dealing with it in my own way.

As a teenager, Derrick realized that running helped him feel better. Soon, running would become his ticket to the future. By his senior year in high school, Adkins was the number one high school hurdler in America. He would go on to win gold medals at the 1995 World Championships, the 1994 and 1995 U.S. Outdoor Championships, the 1994 Goodwill Games and the 1993 World University Games, in addition to his Olympic victory.

Adkins believes depression is partly what drove him to become a great athlete. In a strange sort of way, my mental condition contributed to my greatness in track and field, he says. The thing about track athletes is this: when we get stressed, we go run; when we get depressed, we go run.

Derrick's intensity wasn't limited to a running track. He also graduated from the top 5 percent of his high school class, became an accomplished drummer and graduated with honors from Georgia Tech with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Like many people with depression, Adkins tried to live with his condition as best he could. I was a good actor, says Adkins. I stayed away from my friends and family a lot when I was depressed. I tried to act like everything was OK. My mother and coach knew something was wrong, but I tried my best to hide it.

Also like many, Derrick was reluctant to seek help because of the stigma associated with mental illness. Says Adkins, One of the reasons I suffered was I was afraid and embarrassed to seek help. I didn't want to be considered a psychiatric patient, someone who needed psychotropic drugs.

Finally, like many other people, Adkins found out that trying to ignore depression didn't work. It got to be intolerable when I was in my early to mid-20s, he says. I started experiencing suicidal feelings when I was 26. I realized I needed to get help.

The thrill of Olympic victory provided Adkins with a temporary respite: For a while after I won the Olympics, says Adkins, I was feeling very good. It started to fade, and I went back to being depressed.

Many of us believe that achievements can bring happiness. We say we will be happy once we finish school, get that job, or buy a home. Adkins had sought happiness through athletic achievement. However, even the ultimate accomplishment for an athlete an Olympic gold medal failed to protect him from depression.

Understanding that depression is a medical condition helped Adkins put his life into perspective. It was a relief to know that I had a chemical imbalance, says Adkins. Because my life was going well, I couldn't see why I was so depressed. It made everything clear.

Like many people with depression, Adkins has struggled with the ups and downs of treatment. Antidepressant medication, he reports, tends to make him tired, and he believes side effects have harmed his athletic performance. In the competitive arena Adkins plays in, differences of one or two seconds have huge consequences. A few months before the 1996 Olympics, he stopped taking his antidepressant medication. He felt the drug slowed him down. An episode of severe depression several weeks after his Olympic victory convinced Adkins he needed to stay in treatment and on medication.

I couldn't go on without taking the medication that made me well, he says.

For a while, Adkins left the sport he loved, recognizing that his mental health, life itself, is of greater value. My depression was major. I had to quit track and field. It wasn't a hard decision, he says. More recently, he returned to train for the track and field trials for the 2004 Olympics.

Like many people with depression, Adkins found that part of the answer to his struggle lay outside the realm of conventional medical therapy. He explains: I also feel getting closer to God helped me. I became passionate about going to church and worshipping the Lord, reading my Bible and prayer. Once he completes training for the 2004 Olympics, Adkins will resume his studies toward a master's degree in divinity.