Kevin Love joined the effort to destigmatize mental illness by sharing a very personal story.
The Cleveland Cavaliers forward revealed his previously private struggle with mental health Tuesday in an essay for The Players’ Tribune titled, “Everyone Is Going Through Something.”
Love described in detail his first panic attack, which he suffered just after halftime of Cleveland’s Nov. 5 game against the Atlanta Hawks.
“I blurted something like, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and I ran back to the locker room,” Love wrote. “I was running from room to room, like I was looking for something I couldn’t find. Really I was just hoping my heart would stop racing.
“It was like my body was trying to say to me, You’re about to die. I ended up on the floor in the training room, lying on my back, trying to get enough air to breathe.”
For Love, the episode was a “wake-up call” about the stigma surrounding mental health issues that prevented him from seeking help.
“For 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else’s problem,” Love wrote. ” … To me, it was a form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.”
Following the panic attack, though, Love decided to see a therapist, who helped trace his issues back to suppressed emotions about the death of his grandmother. Now, Love is urging others with mental illnesses to bring them into the open, just like DeMar DeRozan did by recently going public about his battle with depression.
“Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing. … This is an everyone thing,” Love added. ” … So if you’re reading this and you’re having a hard time, no matter how big or small it seems to you, I want to remind you that you’re not weird or different for sharing what you’re going through.”
Athletes and celebrities alike applauded Love for speaking out.
