All In It Together

Learn more about mental health challenges the SB team and friends have lived through and how they manage through the waves...

John Rattray

I’d suffered episodes of depression multiple times throughout my life but never knew what they were. Twice I got all the way to suicidal ideation. The second time, I was finally diagnosed with, “depression”, and so, I finally had a concrete term to investigate. I was 39 and it was like, why has it taken this long to be told this?

I think at times it can be difficult. Just because it is scary, or it can be triggering for some people, maybe including myself. But I think it's important to be able to talk about it, because it opens it up for everyone.

I've done therapy and learned about myself a lot more and about my family's past and how those translate into who I am today, and how you can kind of stop it in its tracks and start a new way to look at it. A way to deal with things that are hard to talk about.

My relationship with my dad before I went to university was quite complicated. He was struggling and drinking a lot. There were periods when he could go in on me and my brother. He'd say things that tapped into my insecurities: "You're not going to amount to anything. You're stupid." My university experience, in some ways, was a way to fight through childhood experiences of feeling stupid and almost proving I wasn't.