HCBA Lawyer Magazine Vol. 28, No. 6 | Page 5

E D I T O R ’ S
M E S S A G E
E d C o m e y - L a w C l e r k t o U. S . B a n k r u p t c y Ju d g e M i c h a e l G. Wi l l i a m s o n
destigmatizing depression
Creating a better environment for talking about mental health …
that’s where we need to get to.
I
’ve always felt bad for Kevin Love. As NBA fans
know, the five-time NBA All-Star power forward
has been subject to trade rumors almost from the
moment he was traded from the Minnesota
Timberwolves to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Worse,
more than once Love has been passive aggressively called
out on social media by no less than LeBron James himself.
Oh, and his teammates accused him
of faking an illness so he didn’t have
to play the second half of a game.
That’s why I found the March 6,
2018 letter he penned to The
Players’ Tribune so courageous.
Just weeks before, DeMar
DeRozan, himself a four-time NBA
All-Star, tweeted — seemingly out
of nowhere — that sometimes
depression gets the best of him. In
later interviews, DeRozan admitted
he has suffered from depression
since he was a young kid. And
because of that, he learned an important lesson: Never
make fun of somebody because you never know what that
person is going through.
In his letter, which came on the heels of DeRozan’s
frank admission, Love revealed for the first time that he
had suffered a panic attack during the first half of a game
months before (the same one teammates accused him of
faking an illness to get out of). He was startled because
he’d never had a panic attack before. As Love tells the
story, everything he thought about mental health changed
that day.
It was, in his words, “a wakeup moment.” And Love
did something about it — something he once scoffed at.
He saw a therapist.
Much to Love’s surprise, the focus of the therapy
wasn’t on basketball. It was on a range of other issues.
One of those was Love’s difficulty dealing with the
© Can Stock Photo / enterlinedesign
SUMMER 2018
|
HCBA LAWYER
unexpected death of his Grandma Carol. His therapy
sessions — which, in his words, were “awkward and hard”
— made him see the power of saying things out loud.
In sharing his experience, Love (echoing DeRozan’s
comments) emphasized an often unspoken truth: “everyone
is going through something that we can’t see.” And Love’s
modest solution — for lack of a better word — is simple:
“Creating a better environment for
talking about mental health …
that’s where we need to get to.”
Mental health, of course, has
been in the news lately with the
unfortunate passing of Kate Spade
and Anthony Bourdain. At the risk
of hyperbole, depression has
become an epidemic in this country.
The problem is particularly acute in
the legal profession.
Fortunately, The Florida Bar
recently created a Special
Committee on Mental Health and
Wellness of Florida Lawyers. The committee is evaluating
ways The Florida Bar can help lawyers, such as by
creating peer-counseling resources or other benefits that
focus on exercise, diet, and stress reduction. But one of
the committee’s chief functions is working to destigmatize
mental illness in the legal community.
I’m not remotely qualified to talk about what causes
depression or how to treat it. But I do know that
DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love are right: everyone
is going through something that we don’t see. And The
Florida Bar’s new Mental Health and Wellness Center
(www.floridabar.org/member/healthandwellness center/)
is a great resource to help lawyers cope with those
problems. But I also know that all the resources in the world
won’t do any good if lawyers are afraid to ask for help. It is
incumbent upon each of us to create a better environment
for talking about mental health.
3