Landsberg goes on the record about depression at LEAD Expo

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on September 13, 2022.

Herald photo by Justin Seward Michael Landsberg speaks about his battle with depression and anxiety during the LEAD Healthy Living Expo.

Former TSN Off the Record host Michael Landsberg spoke at the LEAD Healthy Living Expo on Saturday about his struggles with depression and how people can cope.

Landsberg is known as one of the country’s most vocal mental health advocates, establishing the #SickNotWeak non-profit organization and is dedicated to eradicating stigma around mental health.

“On my arm it’s says 11/24/08, YUL, MH-521 0400 and I have that tattooed on my arm because that’s represents for me the lowest point of my life, mental health wise,” said Landsberg.

“So 11/24/08 is Nov. 24, 2008, YUL is the Montreal airport code, MH 521 is Marriott hotel room 521, 0400 is 4 a.m. in the morning. We were there shooting Off the Record at the Grey Cup and I had been really sick for a year and at 4 a.m. in the morning I sat on the edge of my bed and I thought, ‘Wow, I understand why people take their own lives.’ It wasn’t that I was a real risk to myself because I had been through it before and I was not hopeless. So I knew that there could be help for me. But if I didn’t know that it may have turned out really differently and I think that’s so important for me to say.”

Landsberg said he was here to talk about mental health, so maybe others talk about it.

“So this morning, standing looking at that bridge, I just found it so sad that we still experience that in our lives,” he said.

“That somehow in 2022 the stigma around mental illness is just as bad as it probably was 10 years ago. I don’t know why because we’ve tried so many different things like Bell Let’s Talk day, that you’d think that we’d be doing better with it. But still people do not talk about their mental health and that’s why I’m up here.”

Landsberg has battled anxiety since he was five years old and ruled his life, in some ways, as a kid.

“It determined what I would do and what I would not do,” said Landsberg.

“I didn’t know what anxiety was. I had no idea that was actually what you could call what I was experiencing. I just thought I was a loser. I just thought this is me, I was afraid to do things other kids wouldn’t do. I was afraid I had a specific phobia called emetophobia – that’s fear of throwing up.”

He has battled depression for 22 years.

“One of the things that led me to that was when my daughter was young, three-and-a-half-years old, she was diagnosed with a serious eye condition and as someone who experienced anxiety, I think that I coped with it more poorly than anybody,” said Landsberg.

“Now any of us who have a sick kid obviously are going to be freaked out about it and maybe slightly obsessed by it. But I just couldn’t put it behind me. Every single second, no matter what I did, it was there in my mind and as I got more and more anxious, I started to get depressed. I started to fall into this hole, I started to become someone I was not and I did not want to be. And that for me was something that happened without me even knowing it.”

Landsberg told the crowd what depression has done to him the last time he fell into that deep dark hole.

“I could not for some reason look people in the eyes, said Landsberg.

So no matter what I would do … I would tell myself … look at the camera and I would try and then I would have to move slightly off. And I thought, this is terrible, like I’m making a fool of myself. Everyone’s going to think what a joke that guy is but no one said anything, which tells you also about the next thing about depression.”

He also touched on depression causing a loss of self-esteem, loss of joy and loneliness.

Landsberg has an agreement with his wife that he has to tell her when he’s having a bad day.

“Because if you don’t tell someone that you have this illness, imagine what goes through their head,” he said.

“Like the first time … I said you know there’s something really wrong … So I thought to myself if I don’t tell my wife that there’s something wrong with me, she’s going to think that I must be miserably unhappy and she must no longer be the right person for me because I am a different person. So I think the biggest think you can do is to communicate.”

The inaugural LEAD Healthy Living Expo was held over a two-day at Exhibition Park.

“I feel like we’re headed in the right direction with this show because it’s something that doesn’t exist currently in Lethbridge,” said Chris Meilleur, owner and operator of the expo.

Meilleur said there was a lot of things coming out of COVID, that the gyms were closed, a lot of things we offer in town, like a lot of the small businesses that offer things in that healthy living space – weren’t able to get out and market and promote.

“I think coming out of COVID, you get a lot of people starting to think about what does it mean to live healthy and it’s different for everyone,” he said.

“But there’s so many important messages that we wanted to try and cover with this show, that we thought people wanted to hear and are hoping to hear.” The event also featured Noah Welch of the Pittsburgh Penguins with a presentation for parents and young athletes.