‘I wore the cape of a hero’, says Henry about depression during his career

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Thierry Henry, 46, has revealed he hid his battle with depression throughout his successful football career. “My whole career, I’ve probably been dealing with depression. Did I know that? No. Did I take any action? Of course not. But I adapted somehow,” he said. The former player admitted to having faced his own demons dealing with mental health issues during the years he played professional football, representing clubs such as Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal, Barcelona and New York Red Bulls.

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Henry shared that he had to battle deep-seated insecurities that date back to his childhood, where his father, Antoine, constantly criticized his performance on the football field. “I started to notice it [mental health problems] before, but I was fooling myself. I made sure these feelings didn’t go beyond certain limits, I put on the [hero] cape. But when you stop being a player, you can’t use it anymore. that cover”, he explained.

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He highlighted that his attempts to avoid his problems were a common escape. “We have a habit of running away instead of facing our problems, it’s what we do all the time. We try to keep ourselves busy, we try to avoid the problem or just not think about it,” he shared during a conversation with Steven Bartlett in ‘The Diary Of a CEO’.

The former French player admitted to having hidden the truth for a long time due to society’s lack of preparation to deal with mental health issues. He explained that confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Montreal, Canada, and separation from his children were catalysts for facing the traumas of his childhood. “I cried almost every day for no apparent reason, the tears just flowed,” he revealed.