Mark Yole was 18 at the time, and on the outside, he would have looked on top of the world to most people.

But behind the wins and underneath the surface, the harness racing premiership winner was battling an invisible illness that has now plagued him for about a decade.

“At my lowest point, I was considering suicide,” he said.

During those early days in Tasmania, he had an “outburst” at a steward one night at the Devonport races.

“I got disqualified for six months, which was fair enough - it was the wrong thing to do.”

Looking back on it now though, the Perth man sees it as an early sign of his struggle with the pressure.

Now 29, Yole wants to make other young men and people in his industry aware of depression, and try to reduce the stigma.

“It’s pretty hard to put into words but it just feels like you’re in a really dark place and you’re almost away from reality.

“You sit at home by yourself, watch TV or movies by yourself, and you’re not in the same world. You cut yourself off from everybody and you only do what you have to do.

“I would go and work horses for one or two hours because I had to do it - I had to pay the rent.

“They say it’s the black dog. I say it’s like being in a dark tunnel and not being able to see out of it.”

Bouts of depression would usually hit Yole as winter approached. 

“I would go and work a couple of horses for a friend and that would be a task and then I’d just go home and lay on the couch all day. I would barely eat. The littlest things were just hard to do and I would always be thinking to myself, it’s so hard to do stuff.

“I was always tired – I used to sleep all the time.

“Going to the races was such a battle. Driving a horse - I might have had two drives at the time and I didn’t really want to be there. But we had no money, so we were living week-to-week - we needed winners, we needed results so it’s a lot of pressure that comes with it.”

Yole ended up talking to a friend of his dad’s about how he was feeling. She told him she thought he was depressed and took him to the doctor.

He was put on antidepressants and managed the bouts for a couple of years. However, halfway through 2015, it surfaced in a different way.

“That’s when I started getting anxiety and panic attacks. I’d never had them before so I didn’t really know what was going on.”

He found himself standing in a stall at the races getting a horse ready, and suddenly, he would panic.

“I just wanted to run, and I didn’t really know what was going on because all my life, the one thing, no matter what - no matter whether I was enjoying it or not, I never, ever felt pressure on the track. Sometimes you get a little bit nervous, but I could be on a $1.40 favourite and there was no pressure and I just handled it so well, but for the first time in my life I just couldn’t handle it.

“I really didn’t know what was going on and it all came to a head about August 2015.

“Ben had started training full-time and I was working for him. I went to help him get the horses ready one day and I couldn’t go to the races. I just couldn’t go. I couldn’t even help him get them ready. I was just panicking, I felt sick. I think I had eight drives that night and I forfeited all eight and my mum said, ‘you need to go to the doctor’.

“She’s a nurse and she knew what was going on.”

The doctor told Yole he should not be driving, so he agreed to take a month off.

“People didn’t know what had happened, but they knew I’d given up the drives. It was really hard for me because even that night that I gave up the drives, I think three of the horses won, but it had gotten to a point where I just couldn’t keep going.”

He was prescribed more medicine and started seeing a counsellor.

“She’s been fantastic. That really got me back down, settled, and after I took the month off, I think it was the best thing I ever did. I went back driving and then I won the premiership last year.”

Yole said his mental health was something he would still always have to be aware of. His parents, brother, fiancee and son all help him keep on top of it.

“I always say to new drivers coming through, ‘if you get a few winners, don’t let it go to your head because it will, but be smart enough to realise you’re getting ahead of yourself and you don’t know it all’.”

He said people who were down or depressed shouldn’t keep it a secret.

"Talk to people. Don’t be ashamed. Even if you don’t think you’ve got depression, but you’re just not feeling great, talk to someone.

“Even now, my fiancee and I talk about that stuff. She’s really great - if I’m feeling a bit down or she’s feeling a bit down, we can sit down and talk about it and work through it together.

“You never know what talking to people can do.”

Yole also wants Tasracing to put a bit more work into looking after people’s mental health by introducing a welfare officer.

“I think it’s a lot more common than people realise in this industry and what I would like to see is just a little bit of support from Tasracing.”