Love discusses mental health struggles

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Keith Allison | Flickr

Kyle McKee, Sports Editor

Kevin Love lives a life most people can only dream of.

Love is entering his 12th season in the NBA. In those 12 seasons, Love has made the All-Star team five times, has been selected to the All-NBA Second Team twice, won the 2016 NBA championship as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers and has even won the NBA All-Star Weekend Three-Point Shootout.

Love has earned more than $100 million in his NBA career and is currently on the first year of his $120 million contract with the Cavs. Love is 31 years old, still in his prime, with plenty of basketball left to play if he chooses to.

However, with all that said, Love deals with something many people deal with in life — depression and anxiety.

No matter how successful someone is or becomes, no matter how much money someone makes or has, everyone deals with some form of mental illness every day.

On Sept. 23, Love was interviewed by Charlamagne tha God, a famous radio and television personality, at 92Y in New York City, about mental health.

Both individuals have been open about their dealings with anxiety and depression. Love wrote an article back in March of 2018 for the Players Tribune, detailing his experiences with anxiety and depression.

Since then, Love has been a huge advocate of mental health, creating the Kevin Love Fund with the mission “to inspire people to live their healthiest lives while providing the tools to achieve physical and emotional well-being,” according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation.

Charlamagne wrote a book titled “Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me,” detailing his experiences with anxiety and depression. In this talk, Love detailed his first encounters with anxiety and depression as a teenager in high school and in college.

Love talked about his panic attack on Nov. 5 against the Atlanta Hawks as well as when he played with LeBron James and how much pressure that put on his team and himself.

Additionally, Love discussed how he deals with anxiety and depression every day. Along with interviewing Love, Charlamagne also spoke about his dealings with anxiety and depression.

After sharing his experiences with depression and anxiety, Love is using his platform as a star NBA player to open up public discussion concerning mental health, in hopes of empowering people to seek help and mental wellness.

Mental health is something that needs to be discussed more. People do not discuss it because they are too embarrassed to talk about their feelings or they are afraid of what others will perceive them as. Anyone who has struggled with anxiety, depression or some sort of mental illness can attest to that.

Love puts it best in his Players Tribune article by saying, “Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing. What you do for a living doesn’t have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing… Everyone is going through something we can’t see.”