This article examines what causes leaders to fall into depression and what are the strategies they can use for battling depression.

I first encountered the term ‘depression’ in 1982. I suffered a bout of it when I was 27.

I was thrust into leadership that year. I had always played the second fiddle since I was 14. Peter Chao, Founder of Eagles Communications (a not-for-profit Christian Organization), had always been our ‘chief honcho’.

Even though we were the same age, Peter was always the visionary, with clear foresight and deep maturity. He also had great courage to take us into unknown terrain and make tough decisions despite the odds.

We have served together since we were 14. But I was more of a follower..

In 1982, at age 27, I was thrust into ‘the buck stops here’ leadership, serving as the acting President of Eagles Communications, when Peter decided to pursue his Master’s Program at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Despite my apprehension, the board and members assured me of their support.

At the same time, I was running a new start-up, as the sole distributor for GRACO and other branded children’s products.

In order to give my full attention to Eagles, I relinquished my role as Executive Director to my partner, Victor, who was two years younger.

We had a great working relationship in Eagles, often jointly chairing projects. We were very successful and complemented each other well. He was strong operationally while I had more relational skills.

I was his mentor, friend and partner.

I trusted him completely as he was one of the key leaders in the Eagles. He was our go-to leader in many of our initiatives. He was a charming negotiator and hard-nosed leader, extremely hard-working, and often burning candles at both ends.

About six months into his position, I discovered Victor had been abusive to our staff. He had even offended some of our core leaders.

Being a leader, I felt the compulsion and mustered enough courage to carefront the situation: speaking as firmly and gently as possible.

Within half hour of interaction, Victor felt very offended. He slammed the door and left in a huff.

He never spoke to me again.

Despite numerous attempts by our board members and me to reach out to him, he refused any meet up. Somehow, his heart was filled with bitterness and anger.

For a year, I couldn’t lead. I blamed myself. I felt I had failed as a leader.

It was a most painful and traumatic experience. I was completely devastated, and had no more motivation to lead.

A doctor friend finally dropped the ‘D’ word on me. I was not sure if I was clinically depressed as I didn’t see a psychiatrist as depression as a field was fairly new in the 80s.

All I knew was I couldn’t function.

Thankfully, during the summer break, Peter returned and took the tough decision to remove him. Together with the board and Alison, my wife, they encouraged, nursed and restored me to health and leadership.

It was my first encounter with depression.

Over these past years, I have journeyed with a few close friends, who were very successful in their work, and who had succumbed to depression.

These experiences helped me understand how successful leaders can be crushed by this issue.

I attempt to dwell into this as I have observed over the past few months of celebrities, champions and CEOs, who were decimated by depression.

The latest victim being the sudden and tragic suicide of the highly acclaimed Korean actor Lee Sun Kyun, who starred in the Oscar-winning Parasite.

Most recently, there were Matthew Perry, the famous actor in the award-winning sitcom, Friends and Coco Lee, the Chinese American singer and songwriter.

In the world of elite athletes, one prime example is Simone Biles, the American once-in-a-generation gymnast. Winning 25 medals at the World Championships made her the most successful athlete of the competition.

Others include top tennis player Naomi Osaka and Paul Pogba, the ex-Manchester United 89-million-pound soccer star, who suffered from depression, when he played under Jose Mourihno.

Of course, we had Michael Phelps, the most medalled Olympian in the history of sports.

In the corporate front, former Fortune 500 CEO Philip Burguieres estimated that 50% of CEOs, at some time in their lives, experienced depression. CEOs experience at least as much anxiety — or more — as anyone else in the company, and it is critical to be aware when depression or anxiety impacts their lives.

One such corporate titan was Piyush Gupta , Group CEO of DBS, who leads the best bank in Singapore.

Based on current evidence, elite athletes appear to experience a broadly comparable risk of high-prevalence mental disorders (4-9 % of the population) relative to the general population.

A greater risk of disorder (up to 10-15 %) may be experienced by elite athletes who are injured, approaching/in retirement or experiencing performance difficulty.

Why are successful people more prone to depression?

1. ‘Humpty Dumpty had a Great Fall’ Factor: Sudden Traumatic Failure

“My whole identity and self-worth were so wrapped up in my work,

which had given me meaning and purpose.

With that gone, I lost meaning and purpose.”

A very close friend, X, contacted me desperately, insisting on meeting up immediately. Over lunch, he shared his sense of lostness and despair.

‘X’ had been the CEO of a very successful charity organization in Singapore, winning numerous awards.

He was the poster-boy for the organization. He was intensely committed and hugely competent. He was the chief operation leader, chief caregiver, and chief fund-raiser for the organization.

He served with passion and with compassion. His ‘never-say-die’ attitude and great network with government leaders made him a sought-after speaker and role model for charities.

Two weeks before our lunch, he had received the sudden and devastating news: His charity work lost its major funding from the government. There was an apparent change of direction and policy.

He was completely decimated.

Despite all his persuasion and networking, he could not reverse the policy and lost most of his funding.

He imagined the worst possible scenario: No more funding. No more clients. No more jobs for his crew. No more purpose.

Most of all, he felt like a huge boulder had crushed all his dreams.

He was a colossal failure: he had crashed his staff, clients, donors and all their family members. He was overwhelmed with shame and guilt.

Very quickly, he spiraled down into a depressed state. His whole disposition had changed. No more smiles. No more joy. No more passion.

For the next two years, waking up was a drag. He lost his appetite. His sleep was intermittent. He was in a disheveled state. Suicidal thoughts kept creeping in.

Despite numerous attempts by loved ones and friends to cajole and encourage him, he felt a deep sense of hopelessness.

Fortunately, with help from a psychiatrist, X slowly crawled out of his clinical depression.

He opined, “My whole identity and self-worth were so wrapped up in my work, which had given me meaning and purpose. With that gone, I lost meaning and purpose.”

The sudden and traumatic failure dealt a ‘knock-out’ blow in his life.

Thankfully, with the help of a psychiatrist, close friends, and family members, he finally crawled out of his deep hole.

Having been hailed as a role-model and tasted success after success, the cataclysmic failure drowned him in a tsunami of depression.

2. ‘Who’s the fairest of them all?’ Factor: The Pursuit of Perfection

‘I am extremely thankful that I did not take my life’

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time,

with 28 Olympic Medals.

Many A-List celebrities, world class athletes, and top CEOs reached their pinnacle through hard work, enormous sacrifice, and intense focus.

Their singular pursuit of perfection has made them mega stars, elite athletes and iconic business leaders, which marked them out as global champions.

Michael Phelps described this mentality very well, “I was always hungry, hungry, and I wanted more. I wanted to push myself really to see what my max was.”

But intensity has a price. Triumph is costly.

He confessed, “Really, after every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression.”

In 2004, at the Athens Olympics, he won 6 gold and 2 bronze medals. That same year, Phelps was charged with driving under the influence of Axelrod.

Just weeks after he won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, a photo taken in the fall of 2008 showed Phelps smoking from a bong. He later apologized for his ‘regrettable’ behaviour.

The “hardest fall” was after the 2012 London Olympics, Phelps said, “I didn’t want to be in the sport anymore. I didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

During the all-time low period, Phelps sat alone for three to five days in his bedroom, not eating, barely sleeping and ‘just not wanting to be alive’.

Another key symptom of his depression was his refusal to acknowledge and inability to talk about his emotions or his emotional state. Whether out of shame, or fear of being ostracized, he was uncertain.

“I was very good at compartmentalizing things and stuffing things away that I didn’t want to talk about, I didn’t want to deal with, I didn’t want to bring up – I just never ever wanted to see those things.” confessed Phelps.

Today, he understands “it’s OK to not be OK” and that mental illness “has a stigma around it and that’s something we still deal with every day.”

Finally, he shared, “I am extremely thankful that I did not take my life.”

Through all these ‘high-low’ experiences, he initiated stress management programs offered by the Michael Phelps Foundation, and works with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The pursuit of perfection is both a cure and curse for highly accomplished athletes,

incredibly creative artistes and exceedingly ambitious tycoons.

However, having arrived, they find themselves feeding a hole in their hearts, which

ultra-success cannot fill.

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