Still Game star Sanjeev Kohli speaks about his depression battle

STILL Game actor Sanjeev Kohli has revealed his battle with depression.

The 46-year-old told how he suffered periods of mental ill-health since childhood, which sometimes left him bed-bound and unable to communicate with his children.

The actor encountered his longest bout of depression earlier this year, which lasted several months.

During his worst days the popular actor and writer, who is best known for roles in Still Game and River City, said he would go back to bed after doing the school run if he wasn’t working.

He said: “Before you know, it’s lunch time.

“Sometimes I was only getting up again because I had to go and pick the kids up.

“You can’t get out of bed, and if you do, you can’t get out of the shower.

“Then you spend an hour putting your socks on staring at the floor.”

Sanjeev decided to speak about his experience after becoming an advocate for a mental health charity set up by school friend Mark Pacitti, called Dancing With The Black Dog.

He said: “If we can make it more publicly known – symptoms, how it affects people – then people will know how to react better.”

He added: “I have three children and a wife.

“But put it this way, without saying I’m suicidal, I would play a game in my head where if there was a button I could press that would make an asteroid hit the Earth and take everything out, me and everyone else, then there are days I would press that button.”