As mental health concerns continue to become more and more of a hot button topic in the NBA, the discussion has begun to turn towards how this league-wide problem can be alleviated. Big-name players such as Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have come clean this past year about their struggles with mental health, something that we’re seeing others become vocal about as well.
With mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and so many more becoming a common theme, team owners would like to know what sort of issues they could be dealing with when it comes to certain players and their mental health. According to ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan, some owners would like to have the ability to access players’ mental health records.
The union also insists that mental health treatment be confidential, but some NBA owners, who in some cases are paying their players hundreds of millions of dollars, want access to the files of their “investments.”
That is not, however, the league’s position. “The NBA fully supports protecting the confidentiality of players’ mental health information and, accordingly, committed to the players association that any mental health program we undertake would do so,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass says.
Confidentiality, says Love, has to be non-negotiable. Without it, he says, he never would have become comfortable enough to announce from that All-Star dais that he was seeking treatment.
Though the NBA remains staunch in its defense of ensuring confidentiality, they would be treading some dangerous waters if any of that were to change.
Without confidential records, the stigma around NBA players and mental health would increase even more, as players would likely suppress their internal struggles even more so in order to avoid their stock going down from owners across the league.
Instead of allowing these players to be fully open concerning their struggles, permitting owners access to their mental health records could prove to be irreversibly damaging but thankfully the NBA appears it will maintain its position of confidentiality.
