Basketball is a demanding sport that puts athletes through a lot of pressure over their careers. They face a lot of challenges, put in a lot of effort both physically and mentally and they sacrifice a lot when they join the National Basketball Association.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen many players like Royse White, Larry Sanders, Eddie Griffin, Ray Allen, and more that suffer from mental health issues, whether is depression, anxiety, or other types of mental disorder.
Athletes’ mental health plays a big role in their success. After all, behind every strong body, there is a strong mind. You may have witness this in some of the best basketball movies, like Coach Carter.
With that said, the National Basketball Association and the teams in the league started making some changes just so they can help athletes overcome such issues.
The National Basketball Association forced new rules a few seasons ago just so they can address the mental health issues with athletes. Now they host a mandatory health and wellness meeting for team executives and mental health providers.
This meeting helps teams understand the issue better, and get more experience with dealing with individual cases. On top of that, teams are now required to add at least one full-time licensed mental health professional (psychologist or behavioral therapist) to their full-time staff.
They also need to have a licensed psychiatrist that will be able to assist when needed.
However, since mental health issues are delicate and most athletes don’t want to share them with the public or teammates, the staff has a “written action plan” for mental health emergencies, where all privacy and confidentiality of mental health matters will be kept private.
Mental health issues are not something new. We’ve seen many players from the past like Royce White back in 2012 that suffer from a form of mental health disorder, and to see that the NBA is doing everything in its power to address such issues promises a great future for the athletes.
NBA Health And Wellness Program
The NBA started its own mental health and wellness program where athletes can get in touch with some of the best licensed medical professionals in every city where there is an NBA team. Additionally, they provide a players-only website where they can access more than 90 links about issues including anxiety, ADHD, depression, and all kinds of phobias.
Even though both the National Basketball Association and individual teams are putting a lot of effort towards helping athletes deal with mental health issues, in the end, is all in their hands.
Most athletes see mental health issues as a weakness and they have trouble sharing them with the staff members, teammates, or the public.
That’s why teams are working on making this issue seem normal and accepted. Normalizing the issue will help more athletes talk about their problems, and get help from professionals. After all, how can you help someone if he/she doesn’t want any help?
By addressing mental health issues, and making the issue common in the NBA world, many athletes decided to speak up about their struggles and how they’ve managed to overcome the issue. This inspires other NBA players that are dealing with similar mental issues at the moment. Also check on; free NBA live stream sites so that you can easily stream live NBA matches right away
Basketball is a sport where the average career of an athlete lasts four to five years, and it is full of ups and downs. You need to have strong mental health in order to last longer on the rough sea. That’s why the biggest help that athletes get from their teams and the NBA is simply talking about such issues which connect them to the right people where they can get help.
Such conversations will also help fans understand and have a deeper respect for athletes in the NBA.
In the future, experts predict that the percentage of players dealing with mental health issues will increase, which is why they are working hard on building a mental health program that will help overcome such struggles.