How Ultimate Helped Me Beat Depression

At a time where sport and mental health is very much part of the cultural zeitgeist, Nakul Pande brings us a touching and intimate insight into how Ultimate has affected his own life.

Well, not ‘beat’ exactly. You don’t come back from depression in quite the same way as you do a torn hamstring or a busted knee. Even the best therapist in the world can’t take a broken mind and reconstruct it so it works as good as new. They certainly can’t just tell you to stay off your head for a few weeks or months and avoid any heavy thinking. But I am me again. Perhaps a different, more thoughtful, more emotionally attuned me, but me. And I don’t know if that would have happened without ultimate.

Here’s when I knew I wasn’t going to make it on my own. It was the last day of Burla 2012. We’d finished our last game a few hours before and were having a post-lunch snooze on the beach. I’d been with my best friends, playing my favourite sport, in one of the most beautiful parts of my favourite country on earth for five days. But there was a void where what I had always thought of as me used to be. I was so empty inside I couldn’t even cry.