# data[].attributes.body
Adam and Robyn meet at a support group for kids who have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The story follows their attempts to navigate everyday life and to try and have a "normal" teenage relationship, despite the challenges they face.

# data[].attributes.headline
Essential Questions: Why does mental health carry such a negative stigma in society? What can we do to change this?

# data[].attributes.subject
Essential Questions: Why does mental health carry such a negative stigma in society? What can we do to change this?

# data[].attributes.headline
"There's no shame in taking care of your mental health" - Sangu Delle

# data[].attributes.subject
"There's no shame in taking care of your mental health" - Sangu Delle

# data[].attributes.body
Sangu Delle, who lives with anxiety and depression, talks about how he overcame the profound shame that he felt when he realized he needed to address his mental health. He also talks about his unique challenge overcoming the stigma of "African masculinity," and how people living in low-income areas of the world are especially affected by mental health issues, yet receive the least amount of help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sangu Delle: There's no shame in taking care of your mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When stress got to be too much for TED Fellow Sangu Delle, he had to confront his own deep prejudice: that men shouldn't take care of their mental health. In a personal talk, Delle shares how he learned to handle anxiety in a society that's uncomfortable with emotions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fans of the Impossible Life - Kate Scelsa

# data[].attributes.subject
Fans of the Impossible Life - Kate Scelsa

# data[].attributes.body
The only time Mira ever feels truly awake and happy is when she is with her best friend Sebby. But Sebby has had his share of challenges as well, growing up in a foster home. And when the two befriend Jeremy, a boy at Mira's new school, they all realize that sometimes just to get through daily life, you need people are willing to see past your struggles and create moments in time where they do not even exist.

# data[].attributes.body
This song depicts a narrator who is severely depressed, but feels as though he has no one to talk to because nobody would care about him. The main message of the song, however, is that this is never true - there is always someone there who truly cares, who will listen, and who will do whatever they can to be your light at the end of the tunnel.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Logic - 1-800-273-8255 ft. Alessia Cara, Khalid (Official Video)

# data[].attributes.body
This movie follows Charlie, a high school freshman who is having trouble adjusting, especially in the wake of past events like the death of his beloved aunt and his friend's suicide. A couple of seniors, Patrick and Sam, take Charlie under their wing, bringing him hope. But as the movie progresses, Charlie is forced to come to terms with his past and deal with feelings he has been suppressing for his entire life.

# data[].attributes.headline
1N5. Stop the Stigma. Start the Conversation.

# data[].attributes.subject
1N5. Stop the Stigma. Start the Conversation.

# data[].attributes.body
This Cincinnati-based movement is seeking to bring awareness to mental health issues and educate people so that the negative stigma surrounding this topic can be overcome. Their video series, #Iam1N5, features young adults who bravely speak out about their own struggles with mental health in the hopes that others will be inspired to take this issues seriously.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stop the Stigma. Start the Conversation.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Adventures in Depression" - Allie Brosh

# data[].attributes.subject
"Adventures in Depression" - Allie Brosh

# data[].attributes.body
Author and artist Allie Brosh depicts her personal struggle with depression in a quirky, humorous blog post. She speaks freely and honestly, and though she uses humor to lighten to conversation, she digs deeper than most people do into the realities of what it is like to live with depression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason...

# data[].attributes.body
The continuation of Brosh's first blog post, "Adventures in Depression." Brosh continues to give an amazingly detailed glimpse into life with depression, while also somehow finding a way to include humor. Her honesty makes it easy for readers to connect and relate, whether they have experienced depression or not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.

I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was.

But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.

I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled. I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience.

Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something can be without involving real emotions.

The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief. I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness - annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different.

Which leads to horrible, soul-decaying boredom.

I tried to get out more, but most fun activities just left me existentially confused or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.

Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.

Everyone noticed.

It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are...

At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything - even the things you love, even fun things - and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray - a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something - it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."

I started spending more time alone.

Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.

It's a strange moment when you realize that you don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm sure I would have felt surprised. I have spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. Ever since my most distant single-celled ancestor squiggled into existence, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.

Yet there I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.

That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to keep going.

When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the most miserable, endless wasteland, and - far in the distance - I had seen the promising glimmer of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for just a moment, I thought maybe I'd be able to stop and rest. But as soon as I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to turn around and walk back the other way.

Soon afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfortable way to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.

I didn't want it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to be nonchalant about it just makes it weird for everyone.

I was also extremely ill-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, so I agreed to see a doctor so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.

The next few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people about my feelings that didn't exist so I could be prescribed medication that might help me have them again.

And every direction was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer it takes to feel different, the more it starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.

My feelings did start to return eventually. But not all of them came back, and they didn't arrive symmetrically.

I had not been able to care for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care about things again, I HATED them. But hatred is technically a feeling, and my brain latched onto it like a child learning a new word.

Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to feel almost offensive.

Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things. I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.

At some point during this phase, I was crying on the kitchen floor for no reason. As was common practice during bouts of floor-crying, I was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. Then, through the film of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled piece of corn under the refrigerator.

I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. And then that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the most confusing bout of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.

I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

My brain had apparently been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the last nineteen months, and it had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to be an act of vengeance.

That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it's funny. I don't even know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a nice, heartwarming story about the support of the people who loved and believed in me, I'm going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. And then I'm going to have to try to explain that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the way the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so alone... and it was just sitting there! And no matter how I explain it, I'll get the same, confused look. So maybe I'll try to show them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will get even weirder.

Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it's going to be okay, but - and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else - the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed. And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.

But when you're concerned that the miserable, boring wasteland in front of you might stretch all the way into forever, not knowing feels strangely hope-like.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled ...

# data[].attributes.headline
"100+ Artists Try To Show What Depression Looks Like..."

# data[].attributes.subject
"100+ Artists Try To Show What Depression Looks Like..."

# data[].attributes.body
These artists give startlingly unique, personal, and honest depictions of what depression looks and feels like. The images provide a lot of opportunities to reflect on what it really means when someone is depressed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Life is not always easy. Sometimes it's crushing, dark and sad. Take a look at 100+ artworks by various artists and see how they feel or imagine depression.

Living with depression is hard, but it is treatable, so if you think that you might be suffering from depression, don't ignore the signs. Get help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
100+ Artists Try To Show What Depression Looks Like And Some Results Will Make Your Skin Crawl

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life is not always easy. Sometimes it's crushing, dark and sad. Take a look at 100+ artworks by various artists and see how they feel or imagine depression. Living with depression is hard, but it is treatable, so if you think that you might be suffering from depression, don't ignore the signs.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Everyone Is Going Through Something" - Kevin Love

# data[].attributes.subject
"Everyone Is Going Through Something" - Kevin Love

# data[].attributes.body
Kevin Love, a basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers, opened up about a recent panic attack that he experienced in the middle of a nationally televised game. His message is to help remove the negative, shameful stigma surrounding mental health, and especially surrounding people like male athletes who are stereotypically viewed as strong and masculine, and perhaps immune to such struggles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It came out of nowhere. I'd never had one before. I didn't even know if they were real. But it was real - as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle. Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my mental health has changed.

I've never been comfortable sharing much about myself. I turned 29 in September and for pretty much 29 years of my life I have been protective about anything and everything in my inner life. I was comfortable talking about basketball - but that came natural. It was much harder to share personal stuff, and looking back now I know I could have really benefited from having someone to talk to over the years. But I didn't share - not to my family, not to my best friends, not in public. Today, I've realized I need to change that. I want to share some of my thoughts about my panic attack and what's happened since. If you're suffering silently like I was, then you know how it can feel like nobody really gets it. Partly, I want to do it for me, but mostly, I want to do it because people don't talk about mental health enough. And men and boys are probably the farthest behind.

I know it from experience. Growing up, you figure out really quickly how a boy is supposed to act. You learn what it takes to "be a man." It's like a playbook: Be strong. Don't talk about your feelings. Get through it on your own. So for 29 years of my life, I followed that playbook. And look, I'm probably not telling you anything new here. These values about men and toughness are so that they're everywhere ... and invisible at the same time, surrounding us like air or water. They're a lot like depression or anxiety in that way.

So for 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else's problem. Sure, I knew on some level that some people benefited from asking for help or opening up. I just never thought it was for me. To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.

Then came the panic attack.

It happened during a game.

It was November 5th, two months and three days after I turned 29. We were at home against the Hawks - 10th game of the season. A perfect storm of things was about to collide. I was stressed about issues I'd been having with my family. I wasn't sleeping well. On the court, I think the expectations for the season, combined with our 4-5 start, were weighing on me.

I knew something was wrong almost right after tip-off.

I was winded within the first few possessions. That was strange. And my game was just off. I played 15 minutes of the first half and made one basket and two free throws.

After halftime, it all hit the fan. Coach Lue called a timeout in the third quarter. When I got to the bench, I felt my heart racing faster than usual. Then I was having trouble catching my breath. It's hard to describe, but everything was spinning, like my brain was trying to climb out of my head. The air felt thick and heavy. My mouth was like chalk. I remember our assistant coach yelling something about a defensive set. I nodded, but I didn't hear much of what he said. By that point, I was freaking out. When I got up to walk out of the huddle, I knew I couldn't reenter the game - like, literally couldn't do it physically.

Coach Lue came up to me. I think he could sense something was wrong. I blurted something like, "I'll be right back," and I ran back to the locker room. I was running from room to room, like I was looking for something I couldn't find. Really I was just hoping my heart would stop racing. It was like my body was trying to say to me, You're about to die. I ended up on the floor in the training room, lying on my back, trying to get enough air to breathe.

The next part was a blur. Someone from the Cavs accompanied me to the Cleveland Clinic. They ran a bunch of tests. Everything seemed to check out, which was a relief. But I remember leaving the hospital thinking, Wait ... then what the hell just happened?

I was back for our next game against the Bucks two days later. We won, and I had 32. I remember how relieved I was to be back on the court and feeling more like myself. But I distinctly remember being more relieved than anything that nobody had found out why I had left the game against Atlanta. A few people in the organization knew, sure, but most people didn't and no one had written about it.

A few more days passed. Things were going great on the court, but something was weighing on me.
Why was I so concerned with people finding out?
It was a wake-up call, that moment. I'd thought the hardest part was over after I had the panic attack. It was the opposite. Now I was left wondering why it happened - and why I didn't want to talk about it.

Call it a stigma or call it fear or insecurity - you can call it a number of things - but what I was worried about wasn't just my own inner struggles but how difficult it was to them. I didn't want people to perceive me as somehow less reliable as a teammate, and it all went back to the playbook I'd learned growing up.

This was new territory for me, and it was pretty confusing. But I was certain about one thing: I couldn't bury what had happened and try to move forward. As much as part of me wanted to, I couldn't allow myself to dismiss the panic attack and everything underneath it. I didn't want to have to deal with everything sometime in the future, when it might be worse. I knew that much.

So I did one seemingly little thing that turned out to be a big thing. The Cavs helped me find a therapist, and I set up an appointment. I gotta stop right here and just say: I'm the last person who'd have thought I'd be seeing a therapist. I remember when I was two or three years into the league, a friend asked me why NBA players didn't see therapists. I scoffed at the idea. No way any of us is gonna talk to someone. I was 20 or 21 years old, and I'd grown up around basketball. And on basketball teams? Nobody talked about what they were struggling with on the inside. I remember thinking, What are my problems? I'm healthy. I play basketball for a living. What do I have to worry about? I'd never heard of any pro athlete talking about mental health, and I didn't want to be the only one. I didn't want to look weak. Honestly, I just didn't think I needed it. It's like the playbook said - figure it out on your own, like everyone else around me always had.

But it's kind of strange when you think about it. In the NBA, you have trained professionals to fine-tune your life in so many areas. Coaches, trainers and nutritionists have had a presence in my life for years. But none of those people could help me in the way I needed when I was lying on the floor struggling to breathe.

Still, I went to my first appointment with the therapist with some skepticism. I had one foot out the door. But he surprised me. For one thing, basketball wasn't the main focus. He had a sense that the NBA wasn't the main reason I was there that day, which turned out to be refreshing. Instead, we talked about a range of non-basketball things, and I realized how many issues come from places that you may not realize until you really look into them. I think it's easy to assume we know ourselves, but once you peel back the layers it's amazing how much there is to still discover.

Since then, we've met up whenever I was back in town, probably a few times each month. One of the biggest breakthroughs happened one day in December when we got to talking about my Grandma Carol. She was the pillar of our family. Growing up, she lived with us, and in a lot of ways she was like another parent to me and my brother and sister. She was the woman who had a to each of her grandkids in her room - pictures, awards, letters pinned up on the wall. And she was someone with simple values that I admired. It was funny, I once gave her a random pair of new Nikes, and she was so blown away that she called me to say thank you a handful of times over the year that followed.

When I made the NBA, she was getting older, and I didn't see her as often as I used to. During my sixth year with the T-Wolves, Grandma Carol made plans to visit me in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Then right before the trip, she was hospitalized for an issue with her arteries. She had to cancel her trip. Then her condition got worse quickly, and she fell into a coma. A few days later, she was gone.

I was devastated for a long time. But I hadn't really ever talked about it. Telling a stranger about my grandma made me see how much pain it was still causing me. Digging into it, I realized that what hurt most was not being able to say a proper goodbye. I'd never had a chance to really grieve, and I felt terrible that I hadn't been in better touch with her in her last years. But I had buried those emotions since her passing and said to myself, I have to focus on basketball. I'll deal with it later. Be a man.

The reason I'm telling you about my grandma isn't really even about her. I still miss her a ton and I'm probably still grieving in a way, but I wanted to share that story because of how eye-opening it was to talk about it . In the short time I've been meeting with the therapist, I've seen the power of saying things out loud in a setting like that. And it's not some magical process. It's terrifying and awkward and hard, at least in my experience so far. I know you don't just get rid of problems by talking about them, but I've learned that over time maybe you can better understand them and make them more manageable. Look, I'm not saying, Everyone go see a therapist . The biggest lesson for me since November wasn't about a therapist - it was about confronting the fact that I needed help.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this comes from reading DeMar's comments last week about depression. I've played against DeMar for years, but I never could've guessed that he was struggling with anything. It really makes you think about how we are all walking around with experiences and struggles - all kinds of things - and we sometimes think we're the only ones going through them. The reality is that we probably have a lot in common with what our friends and colleagues and neighbors are dealing with. So I'm not saying everyone should share all their deepest secrets - not everything should be public and it's every person's choice. But creating a better environment for talking about mental health ... that's where we need to get to.

Because just by sharing what he shared, DeMar probably helped some people - and maybe a lot more people than we know - feel like they aren't crazy or weird to be struggling with depression. His comments helped take some power away from that stigma, and I think that's where the hope is.

I want to make it clear that I don't have things figured out about all of this. I'm just starting to do the hard work of getting to know myself. For 29 years, I avoided that. Now, I'm trying to be truthful with myself. I'm trying to be good to the people in my life. I'm trying to face the uncomfortable stuff in life while also enjoying, and being grateful for, the good stuff. I'm trying to embrace it all, the good, bad and ugly.

I want to end with something I'm trying to remind myself about these days: Everyone is going through something that we can't see.

I want to write that again: Everyone is going through something that we can't see.

The thing is, because we can't see it, we don't know who's going through what and we don't know when and we don't always know why. Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another. It's part of life. Like DeMar said, "You never know what that person is going through "

Mental health isn't just an athlete thing. What you do for a living doesn't have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing. No matter what our circumstances, we're all carrying around things that hurt - and they can hurt us if we keep them buried inside. Not talking about our inner lives robs us of really getting to know ourselves and robs us of the chance to reach out to others in need. So if you're reading this and you're having a hard time, no matter how big or small it seems to you, I want to remind you that you're not weird or different for sharing what you're going through.

Just the opposite. It could be the most important thing you do. It was for me.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Everyone Is Going Through Something | By Kevin Love

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It came out of nowhere. I'd never had one before. I didn't even know if they were real. But it was real - as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle. Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my mental health has changed.

# data[].attributes.body
This picture book illustrates a young girl navigating a dark, lonely world. The motif of the red leaf throughout the book symbolizes hope, even in the face of something that makes it seem so difficult to keep going.