An emotional Jason McAteer spoke about his depression in a moving interview on ‘The Late Late Show’

The more high profile people publicly speaking about their mental health, the better.

Former Republic of Ireland midfielder Jason McAteer was a guest on The Late Late Show last night, and he talked openly about his struggle with depression when he retired from professional football. "It's like a light switch the day you finish," he explained to Ryan Tubridy. "You go home and there's nothing there. You're not going in the next day, your friends are not there, you don't have the club doctor, and it's very, very difficult." https://twitter.com/MCATEER4/status/781397826265841665 He continued:

"I suffered from a bad bout of depression, to be fair. I got really messed up...Depression takes a hold of you and you don't realise you're in this world. You think it's the norm but you're doing things out of character, that your close friends or family would see. I got to a point where I was a real mess."

McAteer recalls one day when he was driving through the Mersey tunnel to pick up son Harry from school, and he considered crashing his career into oncoming traffic. "I thought I could just end all this right now, that it wasn't happening, that I could just quit on everything," he said. He said he then went to his mum's house that night and had "a breakdown...lots of tears, lots of emotion." Luckily, his mum put him in touch with a therapist, and McAteer started to manage his depression. https://twitter.com/TonyBarrett/status/781077203962433536 Tubridy commended McAteer for his honesty, and viewers at home were full of praise too. https://twitter.com/CiamhieMc/status/781994271423561732 https://twitter.com/oliver_golden1/status/781985464622415872 https://twitter.com/madguydaveoc21/status/781983585595191296 https://twitter.com/dervhynes/status/781982506434396161 https://twitter.com/divreg/status/781982418483945473 https://twitter.com/1dor/status/781982264032976896 Watch the segment below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz_JxrqdsWA