Cavaliers forward Kevin Love and now Spurs guard DeMar DeRozan were behind the NBA’s focus behind mental health this past season. Both players have admitted to going through their bouts with mental health and are looking to raise awareness. Many professional athletes are looked as invincible and having no worries because they are paid in millions to play a sport. Love wrote a piece for the Players Tribune detailing his panic and anxiety attacks and how he had to come to terms that he had a problem that needed to be addressed.
Love recently did an interview with the Today Show’s Carson Daly where he discussed his bouts with mental health and how an anxiety attack forced him to come to terms that he was deal with a problem.
Watch @kevinlove‘s full interview with @CarsonDaly about his battle with anxiety. @NBA pic.twitter.com/tgmHRXvzRa
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 20, 2018
In the video Daly, also shared his own bouts with mental health which he didn’t go public with until Love shared his experience. In relation to Love’s and Derozan’s revelation of mental health bouts, Jackie MacMullan of ESPN is reporting that NBA owners are now looking to be granted access to player’s medical records including their mental health condition if there is one:
The union also insists that mental health treatment be confidential, but some NBA owners, who in some cases are paying their players hundreds of millions of dollars, want access to the files of their “investments.”
Although one can understand why owners would want this information to be made available, it may potentially affect players who already see mental health as a weakness. According to the ESPN report:
Confidentiality, says Love, has to be non-negotiable. Without it, he says, he never would have become comfortable enough to announce from that All-Star dais that he was seeking treatment.
The mental health discussion has prompted the National Basketball Players Association to hire Dr. William Parham as its first director of mental health and wellness, and it has convinced commissioner Adam Silver and union head Michele Roberts that hammering out a comprehensive mental health policy needs to be a priority.
Houston Rockets assistant coach John Lucas who runs a wellness aftercare center for athletes has also told MacMullan that he believes that at least 40% of NBA players are dealing with some type of mental health condition and are going untreated. Dr. Parham agrees that the number mentioned by Lucas is not an exaggeration and is not solely a basketball issue but a human being issue that most adults do not address.
According to ESPN, Parham believes that players must first be willing to admit that they have a problem and then solutions will follow:
“With an investment in player wellness, these athletes can perform at an even higher level than they are now,” Parham added. “But they have to be willing. Otherwise, nobody can help them.”
Hopefully Kevin Love’s involvement with mental health awareness and becoming the unofficial spokesman for this can lead to a place where both players, owners and all adults can address their issues and not keep these transgressions to themselves just because their famous and wealthy.
Flip the page for Love’s interview with Jackie MacMullan on the subject of mental health.