World Mental Health Day: We Are Only Ever “Close” To Breaking

The Times Magazine, ‘Supplement of the Year’, issue from last weekend — the 7th October 2017, if anyone’s counting.

The Times Magazine, ‘Supplement of the Year’, issue from last weekend — the 7th October 2017, if anyone’s counting.

Its front cover? A little less aesthetically-oriented than normal, but no less arresting: a middle-aged man in a shirt and tie, with a hand on his chin, (expensive-looking) watch on his wrist and a gaze as thoughtful as it is penetrating — St Paul’s backdrop vying for the viewer’s attention, but ultimately sidelined. Natural assumption: this is a man of (and with) power — just reiterating status quo.

The headline? Abrasive. Confusing. ‘I WAS CLOSE TO BREAKING — Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio on stress and the City’. Abrasive because, well, this sort of thing isn’t usually talked about, is it? Not by men in power at least — and, crucially, not by men in power about men in power. ‘I’ is — procures — vulnerability; that’s why the ‘close’ is so key. Reticent, rejecting: “I was close… but I didn’t” — reframing and shaming it in one fell swoop.

Paraphrased: “Here I am, in a pos…