Letter to the Editor: Justin Casse on Mental Health Concerns in Racing

The broadmindedness of Kelsey Riley's piece on mental health during the age of COVID-19 and within the polarizing aspects of the Thoroughbred industry in Monday's TDN was refreshingly progressive. Both she and Mr. Hamelback spoke of realities that were too hard for many people to divulge in years past. As a 'field researcher' and advocate with significant knowledge on this topic, I was pleased to see the subject conveyed through an industry media platform.

The bubble that is the Thoroughbred industry breeds a roller coaster of polarizing emotions that walk hand in hand with addictions of many kinds, be it a process addiction that we can escape in (gambling, eating, working) or substance (narcotics or alcohol). We seek these escapes as solutions to the anxiety and depression problem. But COVID has taken away our most sociably acceptable process addiction–the sales and our ability to work.

Let's face it: the industry is a lifestyle that fills our time with sale dates, race dates or social events to look forward to. Lately, for the first time ever, we are left alone with ourselves and an inability to use the industry bubble as a means of deadening the mundane world that exists outside of horse racing. It has forced us to isolate and to be unable to connect on a tangible level. Of course, in this day and age, we can communicate and connect digitally instantly, but there is no longer the connection on a physical and personal level. Zoom, emails, text messages and social media can only take us so far. The lack of physical connection and isolation will lead to depression.

Normally, every week of our schedules can be charted out from the very beginning of each year with sales and racing. This hectic schedule removes you from the outside world and any existence beyond the industry. It is an addictive, high-risk/high-reward business that has to be a lifestyle in order for you to succeed. After a sale occurs that you've been targeting for months, there can be a hangover period, but instantly you will be able to set your sights on another race or sale a short time away. This allows for living in the moment to be transitory, but now COVID has prolonged those spells, and our bubble has been plagued on an epic scale. It has disrupted our schedules indefinitely and left us all struggling to have clarity on what a new normal will look like.

It may be true of all careers, but in racing in particular, being self-sufficient and producing results is celebrated and respected. But this is also a principal reason why it is hard to seek out help or admit that you're struggling when things are tough. And circumstances right now are as tough as they've ever been for the whole of the sales and racing community, though I do believe that over the past 10 years, it has been more acceptable to speak about mental struggles. But the fact that the horse racing industry has an average age involvement in the 50-55 range, with deeply ingrained notions of what mental toughness is and when it is applicable, might not help overcome any preconceived notions or stigmas the public may have about mental therapy, anxiety or depression.

Bloodstock agents, trainers, jockeys, breeders, and consignors face tremendous pressures throughout the year or seasonally to meet expectations. The cold reality is that you are going to be significantly more wrong than you are right. You have to accept that success means that your horses lose only 80% of the time. You are set up to fail but expected to win. And the same can be said of pinhookers, whose odds of selling a profitable two-year-old are around 25%. When I was 26, a reputable industry consignor told me, 'You would need the mental make-up of a Navy Seal to make it as a 2-year-old pinhooker.' If anything, it might be an understatement.

To be prosperous, we try to take on as much as imaginable and test our limits, as Dr. Tyler Bradstreet mentioned. Most industry professionals have an inability to say 'no' to the possibility of new business, owners or horses in the barn, which has also led to extreme polarization between the haves and have-nots within the industry. There is not a lot of new money to go around, and so the levels of stress are raised even more. There are already too many variables that can transpire before a sale or a race. After you think you've experienced them all, new ones seem to invent themselves out of the blue. You become immune, or thick-skinned to it after a while and learn to accept the good with the bad and understand that this too shall pass, as cliché as that sounds. That said, knowing and accepting your limits is easier said than done, given the traits of self-reliance most of us have in this game. The ability to ask for help or advice can undoubtably carry you further than any form of self-reliance, as it legitimately can lead to you establishing a team and becoming a leader.

Lastly, I've learned that the goals that we yearn for in this industry are wonderful at the moment we achieve them, but as delightful as they are, the bad moments are equally wicked. Breeding a Classic winner, pinhooking a million-dollar animal, owning an Ascot runner–these are all things that drive of us, but at the end of the day I've found they aren't as fulfilling as I had hoped. They are fleeting feelings of happiness, just like the bad times–the breakdowns, and the financial losses. We hope we can add the Coronavirus to the list of bad but fleeting experiences.

But the big fear, of course, is how fleeting the latter may be, if at all. The truth is no one really knows the historic implications of this virus and the era we are currently in. That is the very scary thought that is plaguing us all. You'd like to think we're all in it together, and we are. Except that right now, we can't really be together, after all.