A Sport­ing Chance: Men­tal health and mas­culin­i­ty at the movies

Of all the pow­er­ful scenes I saw at the cin­e­ma in 2023, there is one that has tru­ly stuck with me. It’s not from an award win­ner, block­buster, or sim­i­lar crit­i­cal dar­ling – the moment occurred dur­ing the sports doc­u­men­tary Ron­nie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything.

Film fans may be for­giv­en for not hav­ing caught The Edge of Every­thing, not least because it is a doc­u­men­tary about snook­er, but also – fit­ting­ly for a sub­ject nick­named ​‘The Rock­et’ – since it had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cin­e­ma pre­sen­ta­tion before quick­ly land­ing on stream­ing. As a snook­er fan old enough to have wit­nessed O’Sullivan’s prodi­gious sport­ing career in its entire­ty, it was a must-see for me, yet even enter­ing the film with a sol­id inter­est in the sub­ject mat­ter, I was not pre­pared for the raw and hon­est truths about men­tal health that the film would con­front me with.

Through­out a career built upon a com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al tal­ent and self-dis­ci­plined improve­ment, Ron­nie O’Sullivan has been unmatched in the snook­er world both in suc­cess and dura­tion, win­ning three major tour­na­ments already in 2024 at the age of 48. Yet despite being overt­ly trans­par­ent and refresh­ing­ly hon­est media pres­ence for over 30 years, O’Sullivan has remained an enig­ma with a com­plex pub­lic persona.

Com­mon descrip­tors of O’Sullivan are a mixed bag reflect­ing dif­fer­ent eras, inci­dents, and appear­ances. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly regard­ed through­out his career as a prodi­gious yet down-to-earth genius with a rebel­lious streak by some, and a trou­bled, dis­re­spect­ful, enti­tled loud-mouthed provo­ca­teur by oth­ers, there has been – until recent­ly at least – an unusu­al lack of con­sen­sus of who Ron­nie O’Sullivan is off the felt table.

One thing that has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since O’Sullivan turned pro­fes­sion­al in 1992 is his rel­a­tive­ly recent ​‘G.O.A.T.’ sta­tus, break­ing and equalling records in the sport to a degree that has made him unde­ni­ably the great­est play­er of all time. Anoth­er change over the last 30 years (one that I con­tend is much more pro­found), is that both soci­ety and the sport­ing world have col­lec­tive­ly wres­tled with the con­cept and impor­tance of men­tal health.

Sam Blair’s com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­tary effec­tive­ly out­lines the achieve­ments and events that have defined a sport­ing career, includ­ing fol­low­ing O’Sullivan’s run to a sev­enth World Cham­pi­onship title. But the film also delves deep into the psy­che and inner work­ings of a dri­ven and ambi­tious yet trou­bled per­son. Ben­e­fit­ting from the unfil­tered and can­did nature that has seen media train­ing averse Ron­nie often run into trou­ble, The Edge of Every­thing cap­tures a series of raw and hon­est inter­views, fly-on-the-wall por­trai­ture, and inti­mate sound record­ings, and places them along­side archival mate­ri­als to uncov­er the man behind the cue.

The com­pli­cat­ed and unre­solved trau­ma that fol­lowed from his father’s mur­der con­vic­tion at the begin­ning of his career is shown to have insti­gat­ed a char­ac­ter change in O’Sullivan, with the result­ing tur­moil cat­e­gorised by pun­dit Clive Ever­ton as a mix­ture of ​“depres­sion and rage.” Described fur­ther by O’Sullivan him­self as a mix­ture of ​“self-doubt, and self-sab­o­tage, and hatred towards myself”, these dark times are cap­tured in the trag­ic response from O’Sullivan upon win­ning sig­nif­i­cant prize mon­ey for com­plet­ing the sport’s fastest ever 147 max­i­mum break – described by Stephen Hendry ​“as the great­est moment in any sport ever” – exclaim­ing, ​“Money’s not impor­tant to me, I just want to be happy.”

The inher­ent dis­com­fort and inner tur­moil exac­er­bat­ed by the psy­cho­log­i­cal inten­si­ty of his job mixed with addic­tion issues, anx­i­ety, self-doubt, stress, and depres­sion led to a long and ongo­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion process. Snook­er fans will be long famil­iar with hear­ing about O’Sullivan’s love of run­ning and his work with psy­chi­a­trist Pro­fes­sor Steve Peters, but here they are shown through an unflinch­ing lens.

When the issue of men­tal health first explic­it­ly aris­es in the film, Ron­nie pokes fun at the term with a smil­ing­ly sar­cas­tic ​“hash­tag men­tal health” before acknowl­edg­ing a wider soci­etal change. Where pre­vi­ous­ly his off-the-table behav­iour would be remarked upon neg­a­tive­ly and scru­ti­nised, now, ​“all of a sud­den it’s cool…I was twen­ty years ahead of the game, mate.” Delib­er­ate­ly self-effac­ing, this ambas­sador­ship of open­ly dis­cussing his own tri­als and tribu­la­tions is described else­where in the film by friend Ron­nie Wood as ​“the very noble job of say­ing how fucked up he is inside.”

The Edge of Every­thing is able to go beyond typ­i­cal sport­ing doc­u­men­taries because of its unprece­dent­ed access, which cap­tures the inse­cu­ri­ties, self-doubts, and inner tor­ment in striv­ing to achieve. O’Sullivan’s will­ing­ness to allow the film­mak­ers to doc­u­ment this per­haps high­lights a key con­tra­dic­tion in speak­ing open­ly about men­tal health; the unfil­tered open­ness that often leads O’Sullivan into media trou­ble when dis­cussing the land­scape of snook­er is also respon­si­ble for this admirable vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that makes the film so arrest­ing. Fear of judge­ment or reprisal often leads to col­lec­tive silence, and at a time of read­dress­ing the media’s his­tor­i­cal­ly cru­el and intru­sive response to pub­lic break­downs, the film reex­am­ines these moments through­out O’Sullivan’s career with the addi­tion of his own voice and per­son­al con­text. It shows remark­able resilience that the fear and anx­i­ety cap­tured through­out the film – lead­ing up to O’Sullivan fac­ing oppo­nent Judd Trump for the world title – are so pal­pa­ble, almost unbear­ably so.

This cul­mi­nates in the scene that struck me so deeply. As the pres­sure alle­vi­ates, the film’s score ris­es, the crowd cheers, and the cam­era dra­mat­i­cal­ly zooms in to new­ly-mint­ed cham­pi­on O’Sullivan’s embrace with run­ner-up Trump, with John Vir­go pro­claim­ing on the com­men­tary, ​“He’s the great­est play­er in the world!” How­ev­er, just as the tri­umphant moment is set to peak, a radio fre­quen­cy sound effect sig­nals a switch to a micro­phone pick­ing up O’Sullivan’s inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions unheard by the crowd and on the tele­vi­sion broad­cast. As the oppo­nents share a lengthy emo­tion­al exchange of mutu­al admi­ra­tion, O’Sullivan breaks into a hid­den howl of ​“It fuck­ing kills me!” – a jolt­ing gear-shift from sea­soned men­tor to a still-strug­gling soul.

As O’Sullivan embraces his chil­dren and hides his face from the crowd, we hear ​“I can’t do this any­more. I can’t. I can’t do it. It’ll kill me.” The deliv­ery is tor­tured, and the film’s audio reveals a hid­den and heart­break­ing tone of the sheer men­tal toll that the vic­to­ry and jour­ney have tak­en on him.

The scene is shock­ing for many rea­sons beyond the inten­tion­al inter­fer­ence employed by the film­mak­ers. The scene presents a truth so often not seen or heard in sports view­er­ship and for that mat­ter, in cin­e­ma. Aside from reveal­ing a usu­al­ly shield­ed moment, it is a shock­ing dis­rup­tion that the film’s nar­ra­tive is not resolved through vic­to­ry alone, as we are so used to see­ing both in fic­tion and non-fiction.

While it would be naïve to not acknowl­edge that the world of sport at large is dogged by out­dat­ed sen­si­bil­i­ties, steeped in tra­di­tion­al val­ues and old-fash­ioned ideals, it has also been an area of sur­pris­ing­ly pro­gres­sive open­ness regard­ing men­tal health. Along­side O’Sullivan, there has been a growth in the num­ber of huge­ly suc­cess­ful sports that have been open about men­tal health issues dur­ing or after their career, includ­ing Tyson Fury, Dame Kel­ly Holmes, Jon­ny Wilkin­son, and Simone Biles. How­ev­er, this is often in the form of inter­views or with­draw­al from com­pe­ti­tion, rather than in the heat of the moment. Stig­ma still exists around admit­ting men­tal health strug­gles while main­tain­ing an ath­let­ic career.

Despite hav­ing por­trayed a per­son so deeply invest­ed in try­ing to cre­ate their own hap­pi­ness and over­come their inner demons over a peri­od of sev­er­al years, The Edge of Every­thing is unflinch­ing in show­ing that men­tal health issues can be and often are ongo­ing, debil­i­tat­ing, all-con­sum­ing, and are not resolved by the suc­cess­ful pur­suit of a goal or exter­nal moments of victory.

In explor­ing why this scene had such a pow­er­ful, emo­tion­al­ly dev­as­tat­ing effect on me that I can’t quite shake, it occurred to me this is some­thing that I’m not used to see­ing in cin­e­ma itself. While it makes sense to cap­ture this sen­ti­ment in a doc­u­men­tary about a sportsper­son who has become an unlike­ly and long-stand­ing ambas­sador for men­tal health, is a sim­i­lar mes­sage present in fic­tion fea­ture films?

As with spec­ta­tor­ship around snook­er and oth­er solo com­peti­tor sports, there is an inher­ent human tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing nar­ra­tives based around com­pe­ti­tion itself and over­com­ing adver­si­ty, but there also seems to be a deep-root­ed tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing hard-hit­ting sports dra­mas that are resolved through phys­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion and vic­to­ry, or just as com­mon­ly, loss and tragedy. In this sense, per­haps cin­e­ma has fall­en behind the actu­al sport­ing world in its treat­ment of under­ly­ing men­tal health issues.

An inter­est­ing coun­ter­point to The Edge of Every­thing while explor­ing male men­tal health in cin­e­ma is to see the same scene pre­sent­ed out of con­text on YouTube with Bill Conti’s ​‘Going the Dis­tance’ from the finale of Rocky over­laid. Admit­ted­ly O’Sullivan has ​“gone the dis­tance” of the gru­elling tour­na­ment, but it is a strange jux­ta­po­si­tion with footage from a doc­u­men­tary assert­ing that these marathon achieve­ments are also the antithe­sis of the inner peace he so des­per­ate­ly seeks to find. Its usage is under­stand­able for a stand­alone clip cel­e­brat­ing the vic­to­ry but is also per­haps a choice that reveals a wider sense of how inter­twined the dra­ma and the anguish fea­tured in both cin­e­ma and sport have become.

Cin­e­ma nar­ra­tives are often a ref­er­ence point for quo­ta­tions pro­mot­ing self-moti­va­tion and/​or work­ing through depres­sion – both Tyson Fury and Antho­ny Joshua have quot­ed or para­phrased ​“The world ain’t all sun­shine and rain­bows” from the famous Rocky Bal­boa mono­logue. This is an under­stand­able source of inspi­ra­tion for box­ers, but it is also one that has per­vad­ed wider self-improve­ment rhetoric.

The Rocky fran­chise set the quin­tes­sen­tial cin­e­mat­ic sport­ing prece­dent with its clas­sic under­dog sto­ry – on and off screen – with both tales pro­mot­ing over­com­ing adver­si­ty through sheer deter­mi­na­tion and will against the odds. Through­out Rocky, Balboa’s inse­cu­ri­ties and men­tal anguish are dis­guised by an out­ward hap­py-go-lucky yet self-effac­ing charm. The only pos­si­ble vic­to­ry for Rocky is to find self-worth through trans­pos­ing the search for inner peace onto his own phys­i­cal­i­ty, under­go­ing a trans­for­ma­tion cul­mi­nat­ing in the much-imi­tat­ed train­ing mon­tage, and end­ing with a final fight in which it is only pos­si­ble to sus­tain or equal a phys­i­cal beat­ing in the ring with Apol­lo Creed. The mes­sage is one of win­ning through going the dis­tance, but it is at the risk of los­ing everything.

It is, of course, unlike­ly that the film would have res­onat­ed so wide­ly or won Best Pic­ture had Rocky solved his issues in a more peace­ful way, and the fran­chise can at least be admired for see­ing Bal­boa repeat­ed­ly fac­ing a con­tin­u­ing saga of sim­i­lar strug­gles against the odds rather than total self-ful­fil­ment through a fight. How­ev­er, both the self-actu­al­i­sa­tion and mutu­al respect that Rocky Bal­boa finds with oppo­nent Apol­lo Creed come only from the life-threat­en­ing, unprece­dent­ed phys­i­cal pum­melling of an ama­teur who has upgrad­ed to a world of pro­fes­sion­al punishment.

Else­where, it is a com­mon nar­ra­tive that often plays out to more trag­ic ends. In a fic­tion­al depic­tion of cue sports, Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie is so deeply into the world of gam­bling in The Hus­tler that he los­es his love inter­est Sarah to sui­cide, choos­ing to con­tin­ue hus­tling rather than walk­ing away from the game to be with her. Dar­ren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler sees Mick­ey Rourke’s over-the-hill and all-but-for­got­ten wrestling star Randy ​“The Ram” Robin­son stuck in a demean­ing, emas­cu­lat­ing job whilst unable to find the emo­tion­al abil­i­ty to rec­on­cile his rela­tion­ship with his estranged daugh­ter, but instead of choos­ing to age mature­ly and face repeat­ed­ly try­ing to con­front and resolve the source of his inner tur­moil, Robin­son opts for cer­tain death by res­ur­rect­ing his wrestling career one final time.

These read­ings are not in any way to den­i­grate these films as at var­i­ous points I have relat­ed to both films in seek­ing to under­stand my own men­tal health issues. I have cer­tain­ly used Rocky as inspi­ra­tion to keep going, and have also empathised with the inher­ent self-destruc­tion of Mick­ey Rourke’s Robin­son. For me, it was some­how eas­i­er to see reflect­ed the approach push­ing through life’s chal­lenges irre­spec­tive of per­son­al toll as some kind of val­our, or sim­i­lar­ly, to choose solo self-destruc­tion as a pre­ferred alter­na­tive route to cre­at­ing a dia­logue. To para­phrase Bruce Springsteen’s orig­i­nal song for The Wrestler, this always saw me leave with less than I had before.

Trans­po­si­tion of men­tal anguish onto phys­i­cal pain is tak­en to new heights in Doug Liman’s 2024 reimag­in­ing of Road House, in which Jake Gyl­len­haal plays Elwood Dal­ton, an ex-UFC fight­er tor­ment­ed by mem­o­ries of killing a for­mer friend in the octa­gon and sub­se­quent­ly leav­ing the sport altogether.

Tak­ing up the posi­tion of an (unusu­al­ly slow to respond) secu­ri­ty man­ag­er at The Road House bar, Dal­ton is ini­tial­ly calm and favours con­flict res­o­lu­tion yet is still will­ing to use his men­tal Rolodex of cru­el phys­i­cal­i­ty to dis­arm an ene­my. Seem­ing­ly unable to feel pain, or at least car­ry­ing it as the trope of phys­i­cal­ly wear­ing your emo­tion­al bag­gage, Dalton’s only Kryp­tonite is the mem­o­ry of killing his friend.

‘The Love of a Good Woman’ is an often nec­es­sary part of the for­mu­la to pro­duce instant cin­e­mat­ic on-screen recog­ni­tion of mas­cu­line equi­lib­ri­um and sta­bil­i­ty. In Road House, love inter­est Ellie is a con­fused mix­ture of arche­types thrown at the wall: ​‘the wor­ried care­giv­er’ meets ​‘damsel in dis­tress’ meets ​‘inde­pen­dent woman’, although this is still prefer­able to ​‘the dead wife’, ​‘the miss­ing daugh­ter’ or ​‘the woman he gen­uine­ly loved that dou­ble-crossed him’ as the alter­na­tive route of insti­ga­tor for an action plot.

Regard­less, Gyllenhaal’s Dal­ton reach­es a new height in cin­e­ma for a man who can­not be open about his emo­tion­al issues. Even when the film has con­coct­ed a sce­nario in which Dal­ton is entire­ly alone in the mid­dle of an open body of water with Ellie he is unable to open up about his past. This cre­ates an unusu­al­ly sur­re­al exchange between the two iso­lat­ed characters:

“So, where are you from?”
[4‑second beat]
​“Me?”

Dal­ton is sud­den­ly too vul­ner­a­ble, pre­fer­ring to deliv­er the ​“you don’t want to know me” line instead of talk­ing about his past. Ellie’s Adri­enne-esque char­ac­ter per­sists in try­ing to save Dal­ton despite this and of course, is reward­ed by being kid­napped as emo­tion­al cap­i­tal, all so Dal­ton can have a nar­ra­tive­ly accept­able emo­tion­al break­through and more impor­tant­ly for the film, a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for violence.

Dal­ton ulti­mate­ly deals with his men­tal pain and trau­ma of killing some­one by…killing a lot more peo­ple. He fin­ish­es off the Bad Guys™ with no reper­cus­sions before hop­ping on a Grey­hound bus to dis­ap­pear. So goes a male fan­ta­sy oft repeat­ed through­out cin­e­ma his­to­ry: the strong, silent, invul­ner­a­ble hero that saves the town, smash­es and crash­es, hits and quits, and goes from zero to hero in under two hours.

The sep­a­ra­tion between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty is some­thing most audi­ences do not strug­gle with, but it is anoth­er link in a chain of a more insid­i­ous under­ly­ing nar­ra­tive of mas­cu­line trau­ma response in film, rewind­ing from the orig­i­nal 1989 Road House through action movies to Bond to West­erns, right back to the incep­tion of cin­e­ma. It has cre­at­ed a lan­guage – or lack there­of – of deal­ing with feel­ings, grief, trau­ma and depres­sion with actions, and not words. If sto­ries do indeed form part of our self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­vide moti­va­tion, where oth­er dis­ci­plines are learn­ing to talk about men­tal health, could the cin­e­mat­ic lin­eage of the strong, silent type be seen as archa­ic? Fur­ther, if cin­e­ma is part of our col­lec­tive psy­che, is the por­tray­al of equat­ing the over­com­ing of men­tal adver­si­ty with vic­to­ry (and often phys­i­cal vio­lence or sac­ri­fice) set­ting a flawed prece­dent for address­ing inner turmoil?

Although The Edge of Every­thing stood out to me for its hon­est depic­tion of actu­al con­ver­sa­tions around men­tal health, it also pro­vid­ed a famil­iar, aspi­ra­tional vic­to­ry nar­ra­tive; let’s not for­get that Ron­nie O’Sullivan is a huge­ly suc­cess­ful sports star. Yet the open dis­cus­sion is refresh­ing, both to cam­era and in can­did moments, and vic­to­ry comes with­out famil­iar mono­logues of self-pity and revenge.

Even in the films I have most admired that depict men’s emo­tion­al suf­fer­ing in recent years, there is still a lot that men do not seem able to say on screen. This is a reflec­tion of the tra­di­tion­al male pride and famous inabil­i­ty to open up that many men expe­ri­ence, myself includ­ed and var­i­ous films have cap­tured this suf­fer­ing in silence, such as Char­lotte Wells’ After­sun and Kel­ly Reichardt’s Old Joy. This hon­esty is part of what makes both films so affect­ing, and in their respec­tive, pow­er­ful­ly emo­tion­al finales, both Paul Mescal and Will Old­ham walk away, trag­i­cal­ly unable to admit just how much trou­ble they’re in.

This is not to sug­gest that sto­ry­tellers should cre­ate films with con­ve­nient hap­py end­ings or dra­ma-less arcs, but as some­one drawn to these issues, it still feels taboo to see sub­stan­tial male dia­logue on these issues on screen unless it’s played for laughs. The pro­found­ly lost char­ac­ter is instead often left to dis­si­pate. There­in lies an uncom­fort­able chal­lenge for the fic­tion fea­ture film in the mod­ern age, par­tic­u­lar­ly in gen­res that often fix­ate on the exter­nal, the trans­for­ma­tive, and the tri­umphant. How easy or appeal­ing would it be to cre­ate and sell an oppo­si­tion­al work of film that artic­u­lates inter­nal strug­gle or wider invis­i­ble ill­ness­es in a non-cat­a­stroph­ic way?

Much mod­ern dis­course on cin­e­ma is right­ful­ly focused on onscreen rep­re­sen­ta­tion and I found this, some­what unex­pect­ed­ly, in The Edge of Every­thing. The raw and inti­mate depic­tion of a per­son on the edge of break­down was a mean­ing­ful mir­ror for me, and per­haps the clos­est I’d seen my own expe­ri­ences of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, burnout, stress, and the pres­sure of just try­ing to get some­where. Even though I am admit­ted­ly a ter­ri­ble snook­er play­er, the emo­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion was immense­ly pow­er­ful to me.

Every day peo­ple pour their blood, sweat, and tears into achiev­ing their goals and/​or just sim­ply get­ting by. To con­tin­ue with sport­ing analo­gies, it is often the norm to leave every­thing on the field. We become trapped in a high-risk, high-reward cycle of sur­vival in an enforced com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, whether we like it or not: from school and good grades to jobs, inter­views and per­for­mance reviews, side hus­tles and long hours, exter­nal com­par­isons and self-scruti­ny, find­ing mean­ing or some kind of inner peace, and just the whole gen­er­al pro­vid­ing, thriv­ing, sur­viv­ing thing. Even in our most basic lives – the lives that sit out­side of the extra­or­di­nary tragedies and trau­mas that the world presents – get­ting through life is a marathon.

O’Sullivan is an advo­cate for con­tin­u­ous and holis­tic self-improve­ment. Although it is a famil­iar cin­e­mat­ic nar­ra­tive to see a male char­ac­ter reach the peak of their phys­i­cal skills and abil­i­ties to over­come adver­si­ty, or oth­er­wise dis­ap­pear into avoid­ance and the quick­sand of self-destruc­tion to trag­i­cal­ly suc­cumb to it, it is refresh­ing to see a doc­u­men­tary sub­vert and tack­le these famil­iar themes with a real­is­tic, human vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and a focus on the impor­tance of address­ing men­tal strength rather than sole­ly phys­i­cal prowess.

The vic­to­ry arc of The Edge of Every­thing is not what the film­mak­ers high­light as O’Sullivan’s major career tri­umph; what the film com­mends most high­ly is his com­mit­ment to an ongo­ing for­mu­la for sur­vival. Unlike fic­tion fea­ture films, its con­clu­sion is nei­ther trag­ic nor whol­ly vic­to­ri­ous. Despite win­ning, there is a sense that the true bat­tle con­tin­ues and despite break­throughs and res­o­lu­tions addressed with­in the film, includ­ing O’Sullivan over­com­ing addic­tion or find­ing peace with his com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with his father, these things are by no means sig­nalled as solu­tions to under­ly­ing difficulties.

In the epi­logue, which sees O’Sullivan laid on a bed in a delib­er­ate­ly con­fes­sion­al fash­ion, the finale of the film sees a final exple­tive-laden impas­sioned out­burst of vic­to­ry, which seems to be a tri­umph over the sport itself, rather than with­in it. Ron­nie exclaims, ​“I’ve tak­en con­trol of my life and that is it, the most impor­tant thing is that I’m hap­py”. He out­lines a refresh­ing unwill­ing­ness to no longer endure a con­tin­u­al beat­ing from his line of work as a route to mean­ing, instead choos­ing to nav­i­gate it in a way that will offer per­son­al hap­pi­ness and contentment.

This epiphany comes from the inten­tion­al­ly ther­a­peu­tic reflec­tion employed; a rev­e­la­tion that sur­pris­es even O’Sullivan who express­es that he doesn’t know where it came from. In choos­ing to end here, The Edge of Every­thing is a state­ment on con­tin­u­ing con­ver­sa­tion, on the impor­tance of words and self-work in look­ing to find long-term accep­tance and exis­tence, where a freeze-frame Rocky end­ing only pro­vides a tem­po­rary solu­tion. If fic­tion fea­tures con­tin­ue to push nar­ra­tives most­ly resolved through cli­mac­tic vio­lent action or trag­ic con­se­quences, it could be offered as a log­i­cal con­clu­sion that there is lit­tle self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for those who don’t seek either of those options.

At a time when the Sec­re­tary of State for Work and Pen­sions has pro­claimed that ​“men­tal health cul­ture has gone too far” and that ​“as a cul­ture, we seem to have for­got­ten that work is good for men­tal health”, it seems more valu­able than ever to have open­ly can­did rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the real­i­ties of men­tal health on screen. The sin­is­ter under­tone of such state­ments is that for peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal health issues, it is sim­ply a lack of resilience that is the real prob­lem – itself an ​“it’s not all sun­shine and rain­bows” fallacy.

Pub­lic rep­re­sen­ta­tion and open con­ver­sa­tion are a neces­si­ty if such cru­el, mis­in­formed atti­tudes are ever to change. For those of us who scream inter­nal­ly, ​“I can’t do this any­more. I can’t. I can’t do it. It’ll kill me” but have been long led to believe that we should keep get­ting hit and keep mov­ing for­ward despite this, The Edge of Every­thing at the very least pro­vides an alter­na­tive role mod­el in Ron­nie O’Sullivan.