“Depression destroyed two of my careers.” Those were the words of Irish musician and The Voice judge, Niall Breslin better known as Bressie, as he spoke of his struggle to combat the illness today.

In a heartfelt interview on RTE radio 1 this morning, the former Blizzards frontman said that his own reluctance to deal with his mental health for years resulted in depression taking its toll, and ultimately destroying two of his careers.

Bressie recently launched his own blog My1000hours.com, and he says the main focus of it is “about exploring positive and proactive ways of improving your emotional fitness and helping you deal with whatever mental stresses you may go through.”

On the radio show, he said that he had gone through a “15-year health journey” to get to where he is today, and said that it was important to “humanise” the issue.

“I decided to humanise my issues and gave them a name I hated – Jeoffrey,” he said. “Humanising it meant that I could start to talk to it, and do things that I knew wouldn’t make it happy. I know it sounds so strange, but by normalising it, I knew I could begin to deal with it and treat it. “

The former Gaelic football and rugby player said he finally knew he had to get help when he had a life-changing panic attack just before he was due to go on stage on The Voice.

“This huge panic attack took hold of me literally minutes before I was due to go on stage. I managed to go on, but to this day, I still don’t know how I did it,” he said

He then said he was able to get a hold on the condition by taking up long-distance running. The 32-year-old hopes that by opening up, he can encourage more people to seek help for mental health problems.

Some listeners took to social media afterwards to say they were “very impressed” with Bressie for speaking out about his issues.

"Very impressed with Bressie on this thoughts re depression,” said one twitter user.

He is currently starring in ‘Bressie's Teenage Kicks’ on RTE 2, and spoke about how he was delighted to help kids in Limerick express themselves through music, by helping them to form their own band.

Online Editors