Following a tweet over All-Star weekend in which Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan said, "This depression get the best of me," the four-time All-Star opened up to the Toronto Star about his personal battle with depression.
DeRozan said that despite all his success at the highest level of basketball, he still has nights where he feels overwhelmed.
"It's one of them things that no matter how indestructible we look like we are, we're all human at the end of the day," he said. "We all got feelings ... all of that. Sometimes ... it gets the best of you, where times everything in the whole world's on top of you.
"I always have various nights. I've always been like that since I was young, but I think that's where my demeanor comes from. I'm so quiet, if you don't know me. I stay standoffish in a sense, in my own personal space, to be able to cope with whatever it is you've got to cope with."
The 28-year-old hopes that speaking out about his own issues will help empower others.
"It's not nothing I'm against or ashamed of. Now, at my age, I understand how many people go through it," DeRozan said. "Even if it's just somebody can look at it like, 'He goes through it and he's still out there being successful and doing this,' I'm OK with that."
In an interview last week with SB Nation, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts said the league is devoting resources to a mental-wellness program.
"We've been naive -- I'm being kind when I say naive -- in thinking that we didn't have to address and make sure that we were giving as much attention to our players' mental wellness, as we were their physical," Roberts said. "We're working on it. But it's a shame that this hasn't been given attention a long, long time ago."
