Time, money and mental health: the big worries facing the jockeys' chief

We all get a lot of stress these days. If we're not worrying about the bank manager and the taxman, we're fretting over friends and family and middle-age spread. Every day there's something new to exercise our worry muscles, but when we find ourselves thinking it is all getting a bit too much, perhaps we should spare a thought for jockeys.

Paul Struthers, chief executive of the Professional Jockeys Association for the last six years, may not be a psychologist but he is painfully aware that the daily grind of his members is a hard one to bear, and at a time when the issue of mental health is finally emerging from the shadows, jockeys are as topical a group of workers as you are likely to find.

"If you look at the life they have," says Struthers, "up early in the morning, with the constant risk of injury, financial uncertainty, long hours of driving, always riding through some kind of nagging complaint, restricted diet, very little time with the family and little if any time off at all unless it's enforced and unwelcome – if you look at all the possible risk factors, you couldn't design a sport more likely to cause somebody to struggle from a mental health point of view."