Mental Illness Can Strike Anyone, Anywhere
Former NBA player Delonte West's career highs and lows did not revolve exclusively around his professional basketball years.
During early adolescence he began cutting himself and using prescription drugs to self-medicate. His behavior coinciding with a time when early symptoms of mental illness first appear. This is known as the prodromal stage.
He was hospitalized frequently as a child, but it was not until 2008 (in his early 20s) that the NBA player was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This is the challenge of these diseases. Severe mental illness is a chameleon, and it’s common for someone to be diagnosed multiple times as the true illness twists and turns its way to the surface.
Last week after a photo made the rounds on social media of West standing on the side of a road with a sign asking for help, former coaches and players voiced concern. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban tracked him down and assisted in getting him help.
That sentiment in the community over West’s heartbreaking situation was treated with empathy, not scorn, gives me hope mental illness may be shedding its first layer of stigma skin. That society may be starting to understand severe mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are brain disorders just like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer's and Epilepsy. That the causes are neurological.
In 2005, Delonte West gave a candid interview to Washington Post writer Rick Maese The fall and rise of Delonte West where he discussed his mental illness. In the interview he says,
“I am bipolar — just like the rest of us in the world,” he said. “So bipolar is defined as something sad happens, you’re sad. Something happy happens, you’re happy. I think pretty much everyone in the world is like that. Now there are different levels. How long do you stay sad? How does it affect your behavior? How do you handle these emotions?”
He described his illness in such layman terms, it may be difficult for those outside the world of mental illness to fully grasp his reference to his sad and happy moods. In reality, these moods are far more extreme for those who suffer from bipolar disorder. I know individuals whose depths of depression become suffocating. They are literally immobile, while when manic they barely sleep, spend excessively without a thought, and can be at their creative best as ideas flow at a breakneck pace. Their lives like F5 tornados.
Kay Redfield Jamison Page’s Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness is considered the classic first-person account of bipolar disorder. She described her moods with striking, unforgettable clarity.
West was in the midst of a severe mental health episode when Cuban pulled him off the streets, and he is not alone. Other players in the NBA have opened up about their struggles with mental illness as well. One of the most transparent has been Kevin Love, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Love openly acknowledges he suffers from bouts of severe anxiety and depression.
The importance of these celebrities talking generates awareness and humanizes the fact that 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. suffer from mental illness, while 1 in 25 adults in our country suffers from severe mental illness. In other words, millions of people in the U.S. are dealing with a mental health disorder, and no one should feel ashamed.
Instead, we need to keep peeling away those layers of stigma until there is nothing left to peel and no one hesitates to seek out help.
