Having a fat bank account, an overachieving career or a billion-dollar business empire doesn’t automatically exempt you from depression, learns 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.
This story is from the August 2018 edition of Prestige Singapore.
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This story is from the August 2018 edition of Prestige Singapore.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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