When You're Rich, Successful… And Depressed

Having a fat bank account, an overachieving career or a billion-dollar business empire doesn’t automatically exempt you from depression, learns Pearlyn Tham

 

- Pearlyn Tham

When minecraft inventor Markus Persson sold his online gaming company to software giant Microsoft for US$2.5billion, the deal should have made him a very happy man.

He bought a multi-million-dollar Beverly Hills mansion with a 16-car garage, partied with A-list celebrities like Selena Gomez, and installed a giant wall of Willy Wonka-esque candy dispensers at home.

But the newly minted Swedish billionaire soon fell into a funk, tweeting in 2015: “Hanging out in Ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I’ve never felt more isolated”.

Sounds like a #firstworldfirstclassproblem that only self-made tech tycoons face? Persson isn’t the only entrepreneur for whom (sudden) wealth and success have proven to be a double-edged sword.

In a CNN article, psychiatrist Dr Michael Freeman said he once conducted a study in which nearly half the entrepreneurs admitted they encountered mental health issues — sometimes dubbed “founder’s blues” — at some stage in their careers. He thinks this could be due to their having the same personality traits — such as creativity and an appetite for risk — that are commonly associated with mental health conditions like depression and bipolar disorder.