For Chicago Bulls middle Andre Drummond, returning to the courtroom alongside his teammates this weekend got here as a reduction.
Drummond stepped away from the crew for one recreation — Wednesday’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers — after sharing on Twitter and Instagram that he was deleting all social media apps and altering his telephone quantity.
“Time to focus on my mental health,” Drummond wrote. “If you too are struggling with your mental health, you are not alone. It’s okay to ask for help.”
Even with out understanding the complete particulars of what he was going through, Drummond’s teammates and coaches have been fast to point out assist when he returned to the crew for final week’s journey to Charlotte, N.C.
“Everybody was there for me,” Drummond stated after Sunday’s win over the Memphis Grizzlies on the United Center. “Nobody really knew what was going on. I was going through a lot mentally and I had to take some time to really clear my mind and address some things that I’ve been neglecting for a while.”
Drummond’s social media posts have been met instantly with concern and assist — greater than 12,600 likes and 550 responses on Twitter and greater than 41,000 likes and 1,000 feedback on Instagram.
But as promised, Drummond already had deleted all social media and didn’t see the outpouring from the basketball group.
“I didn’t even know what was going on until people started telling me,” he stated. “I wasn’t doing it to get that kind of reaction. It was more so just the closing of a chapter for my mentals just to really escape that and really tackle some things that I needed to take care of.”
After mates and teammates confirmed him the reactions of followers and fellow gamers, Drummond embraced the chance offered by his platform.
He acknowledged that many followers overlook the psychological well being challenges that athletes face, which might make it tougher for athletes to hunt assist.
“We’re looked at as superheroes, like nothing really bothers us and that we don’t have a life outside of the game,” Drummond stated. “People need to understand that we do have personal lives outside of the game of basketball and it becomes taxing at times. That superhero cape we have on has to come off at some point in time. It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to feel. It’s OK to be emotional. We’re all men, but we have to be OK with having feelings.”
Players all through the NBA have been slowly opening bigger conversations concerning the significance of psychological well being advocacy. Bulls star DeMar DeRozan was one of many first gamers to deal with the subject in a 2018 interview about his despair. Other NBA stars corresponding to Kevin Love have since shared experiences, paving the best way for improved consciousness across the league.
Drummond believes this shifting surroundings round psychological well being in males’s sports activities is integral to altering societal perceptions of how males expertise despair, nervousness and different challenges.
“As a man, we’re known to be the masculine one,” Drummond stated. “Nothing bothers us. We have to be the protector, the provider and the one that does everything. Over the past couple of years, guys have been coming out and expressing it’s OK to shed light on mental traumas and things that we go through. It’s OK to share with other people, that other people have the same type of journey that we’re going down too. It’s OK to bring them along, to let everybody know they’re not alone.”
Drummond made it clear that the method he started final week will proceed by way of the season and past.
But for now, the middle is again on the courtroom — and plans to stay there for the remainder of the season because the Bulls chase a spot within the play-in event.
“I feel OK,” Drummond stated. “I’ve obviously still got a lot of work to do with my mentals, but I have a job to do and that’s to win basketball games and to get to the playoffs. So if I’m back, I’m ready to play. All this stuff personally, I can take care of when the time comes. I still have a job to do.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com