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NFL players tackle mental health in league's latest campaign

Palm Beach Post - 5/23/2021

When they choose to do so, high-profile professional athletes have a unique platform to make an impact on issues related to health and wellness.

We’ve seen it with everything from former Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade’s transgender advocacy to Major League Baseball players wearing pink apparel on Mother’s Day to support breast cancer awareness to tennis champion Serena Williams being a spokesperson for medication that relieves her migraines.

And the latest example has come during May’s Mental Health Awareness Month from what some might consider an unlikely source: the National Football League.

Oh, sure, the NFL has promoted for the last several years its Play 60 initiative to encourage youngsters to be physically active for at least an hour a day. And just like MLB, the NFL allows its players to wear pink cleats, socks, wristbands etc. during games in October to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But one thing not typically associated with the cutthroat world of professional football is a culture of sensitivity and understanding when it comes to players or coaches expressing feelings of anxiety, depression, fear, loneliness or anything else that may reveal an outdated version of “weakness” that an opponent can exploit.

That, however, is starting to change.

The NFL's focus on mental health

During the three-day NFL Draft (April 29-May 1), the league repeatedly ran public service announcements featuring current players talking about mental-health issues.

There’s South Florida product Joey Bosa of the Los Angeles Chargers explaining how, until recently, he focused solely on the health of his body and didn’t give much consideration to his mental health.

There’s Solomon Thomas of the Las Vegas Raiders describing the depression and anxiety he experienced after the death by suicide of his sister.

There’s Hayden Hurst of the Atlanta Falcons opening about struggling for years with depression and anxiety.

There’s DJ Chark of the Jacksonville Jaguars revealing that he struggles to control feelings of fear.

And there’s Ali Marpet of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers saying that he has now prioritized having a strong emotional support system to help him when he needs it.

But perhaps the most prominent current player to speak on the issue — yet one who was not part of the PSAs — was Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Dak Prescott, whose brother Jace died by suicide in 2020. According to Yahoo Sports, Prescott believes “the NFL is... doing everything they can to help mental health. I think the NFL is obligated to [help] and they have.”

The PSAs were the NFL’s soft rollout of a series of videos promoting mental health and which debuted on May 4.

This is quite the shift for a league made up of some of the toughest and most competitive men on the planet.

As Judy Battista wrote on NFL.com, “That current players are talking about their own experiences represents a breakthrough in a league where the fear of creating a distraction has been a powerful deterrent to players seeking help. The NFL Players Association and NFL teams offer mental health services for players, although the quality and breadth of the services are not uniform across all teams. And only in the last few years have more players felt comfortable acknowledging publicly that they might need those services in the first place.”

Indeed, it’s been a decade since mercurial former Miami Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Marshall became one of the first active NFL players in recent memory to broach the topic of mental health when he revealed that he’d been diagnosed with borderline personal disorder.

Throughout the remainder of his career, and after his 2018 retirement, Marshall spoke often and openly about both his own struggles and the need for players to prioritize their mental health.

As he wrote in 2017 in The Players Tribune, his 2011 BPD diagnosis was both a revelation and a turning point in his life. He became determined to destigmatize issues related to mental health: “I decided that I wasn’t going to remain silent. I had the revelation that it was my purpose to help bridge the gap in the mental health community, and football was my platform to accomplish that. I didn’t just feel like it was my obligation. I knew, without a doubt, that it was my purpose.”

Previously, Marshall associated the term “mental health” with “mental toughness.” He explained his approach as “masking pain. Hiding it. Keeping it inside. That had been embedded in me since I was a kid. Never show weakness. Suck it up. Play through it. Live through it. Now, I realize that mental health means the total opposite.”

One can assume most NFL players — and elite athletes in general — have grown up with similar beliefs.

But with the NFL now taking a more public stance in its recognition of the need for mental health resources for its players, coaches and support staff, it joins the NBA in helping destigmatize the topic.

In 2018, NBA stars Kevin Love and DeMarr DeRozan spoke openly about their mental health struggles.

Love’s were with panic attacks so severe that they briefly left him hospitalized. Prior to Love’s disclosure, DeRozan had revealed his ongoing battle against depression.

Indeed, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been so concerned about the mental health of his league’s players that he spoke about the topic at the 2019 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference: “We are living in a time of anxiety. I think it's a direct result of social media. A lot of players are unhappy."

The importance of having prominent athletes speak openly about mental health issues cannot be overstated.

It helps normalize the topic for youths (both athletes and non-athletes) who may be struggling but don’t know how to express those feelings or reach out for support.

Perhaps just as importantly, getting in touch with their own mental health issues can ease an athlete’s transition into their post-competition lives.

Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps, who won 23 gold medals, is now a passionate mental health advocate. His Talkspace.com website encourages folks to get counseling and last year he produced a documentary for HBO that detailed the myriad mental health challenges facing Olympic athletes during training, qualifying, competition and in their post-Olympic lives.

Based on his own anecdotal experience, he said he believes some 80% of Olympians are depressed — and often suicidal — in the months and even years after the Games.

Nowadays, whenever he speaks publicly about mental health, he stresses the need for everyone — be they elite athletes or just regular everyday folks — to reach out for help if they’re struggling because “it’s okay not to be okay.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: NFL players tackle mental health in league's latest campaign

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