Pressure almost led me to suicide admits Leicester star

Leicester scrum-half Jono Kitto is spearheading a campaign aimed at persuading players to open up about mental health issues after revealing how his quest for perfection drove him to the brink of suicide in 2011.
New Zealander Kitto, 24, was trying to fight his way into the academy at Christchurch-based Crusaders and reckons the scrutiny placed on players of all ages in the modern game can have devastating effects on the mind.
Speaking candidly to The Rugby Paper, Kitto said: “My mental health issues really kicked in when I was 19, but they stemmed from when I was much younger because I was always perfection-orientated and didn’t handle mistakes very well.
“I was a young player at Christchurch club Linwood, fighting to get in a Super Rugby academy, and I started to believe my life would be defined by my mistakes so I became very stressed and anxious and when I was 19 I snapped completely.
“By June 2011 I was pretty suicidal and really did not want to live. Thankfully, I opened up and talked to people close to me and managed to begin the journey out, but others are not so fortunate and any suicide is one too many.
“The reason I’m okay to talk about it now is there’s a stigma attached to mental illness that it’s a shameful thing to discuss, but it’s a lot more common than people believe with one in four people affected, rather than just one in 100.”
In February, the Rugby Players’ Association (RPA) launched Lifting The Weight, a campaign aimed at increasing awareness of mental health issues and removing the stigma around players coming forward and discussing their problems.
Kitto explained: “Rugby is competitive enough anyway but every single training session and game is now monitored.
“It’s not just in rugby, the whole world is treading towards outcome-based, high pressure, high performance environments.
“In elite sport every aspect of your life is analysed, recorded and fed back to you during the week.
“It’s an environment full of scrutiny which can lead to stress and it’s something young players in particular need to be very wary of. I was going well enough at university and rugby but internally I was imploding.
“That’s the scariest thing about the illness and I know how holding it within myself damaged me and how it drove me to the brink of taking my own life.”
Kitto added: “There’s a male macho culture of not talking about your feelings but if one person benefits from hearing my story, great.
“What the RPA are doing with their Lifting The Weight campaign is brilliant because mental health issues are today’s silent killer.”
NEALE HARVEY