Beasley crisis shows we can't face depression
It shouldn't come as shock that celebrity-stressed pro athletes are afflicted
 Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP That's part of the mystery of Michael Beasley. He's a 20-year-old facing enormous expectations. |
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Forget Twitter, or weed, or whether teams really should draft for character above all else. As of now, all we know for sure is that Michael Beasley was depressed, and checked into a facility seeking treatment for this condition.
A euphemism, maybe, and we could still learn that drugs or alcohol were involved. But there's a reason why most people, including myself, immediately pounced on the rehab/weed correlation, and it wasn't just a certain famous photo.
As a society, we still don't know how to talk about mental illness. Especially when athletes are involved.
There's a ready-made template for stories of addiction and recovery. And no matter what your feelings on pot's relative harmlessness, professional athletes have to go through the motions of penitence whenever they're inextricably linked to big bags of green.
But when athletes are confronted with depression, not only do they have trouble seeking treatment — as fans and media, we're stuck dealing with an exceptionally tricky issue, one that's at once a matter of science and something that millions of people take very personally.
While there has been something of a thaw in recent years, athletes have been notoriously reluctant to seek treatment. That's because they're expected to be tough in the brain, have nerves of steel and know all about facing the pressures of celebrity.
On and off the field, the life they've chosen isn't an easy one, but it's one they pride themselves on having mastered. That's the public face of it, at least. Anyone with his brain turned on can see how pro athletes would be subjected to incredible amounts of stress. Especially when things aren't going their way.
That's part of the mystery of Michael Beasley. He's a 20-year-old facing enormous expectations; we've seen other youngsters, like Greg Oden, seek out help for these reasons. And yet in Beasley's case, his depression — as of now, the only confirmed problem he's dealing with — required his checking into a womb-like rehab center.
Do I know what the Heat forward is thinking or feeling? No, and yet this move is certainly an extreme one. Compare it with, say, Oden's treatment. The similarly eccentric Delonte West missed some games at the beginning of 2008-09, and admitted problems with depression. But that wasn't nearly the national crisis Beasley's turned into. If we try and apply any across-the-board standard, Beasley suddenly looks really sick.
Maybe that's the case. Maybe Beasley really is an acute case. Or maybe, given how little we're willing to talk frankly about these issues — whether with regard to athletes or in our own lives — the nuclear option seems like the only obvious path.
Ultimately, this may tell us more about ourselves than about Beasley's state of mind. What looked like the Summer of Race is ending, at least in the NBA world, on an even more awkward note.
This country doesn't like talking about race, or gender. But at least these issues of identity, policy and culture are out in the open. Trying to discuss, or negotiate, mental illness, though, is like wandering through a minefield in the dark. People are hesitant to "out" themselves. So this very personal issue, which prompts very personal reactions, is reduced to a strictly medical topic.
Forget the ways in which it flies in the face of the athlete stereotype; it's virtually impossible to even broach the subject without knowing whose toes you might be stepping on — or being able to reveal that your opinion deserves special attention. That's why those dealing with it feel so alone and why these stories explode like Michael Beasley's has.
Given the sheer number of adults dealing with some kind of depression (check the sales sheets on SSRIs), it's absurd that the condition is still in any way exotic or sensational. While it raises some of the same kind of complexities as race or gender do, especially in the way others perceive it, depression's just a fact of life.
Perhaps the real takeaway from (what we know of) Beasley's situation is how little it resembles all cliches about depression. It came as a total shock, even to those around him, and seems totally at odds with his whimsical personality. But if only the conversation about mental illness were more public, we'd be ready to accept either this kind of scenario or Oden's offseason tune-up. Especially when, God forbid, it happens to us or those around us.
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