These days, DeRozan is an open book regarding the challenges he’s faced throughout life, but there was a time when, like so many of us, he dealt with his struggles privately. Getting in touch with his emotions was the step he needed toward his healing journey. On Sept 10, he released his Above the Noise memoir in which he details his upbringing and voyage with mental health in hopes of making a difference.

 

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In a recent intervie with Blavity, DeRozan opened up about how his childhood shaped his mental health and how he’s on a mission to destigmatize the conversations surrounding the issue.

In 2018, DeRozan tweeted, “This depression get the best of me…”  Leading up to the tweet, DeRozan had watched an interview with comedian Jim Carrey that resonated with him and helped him come to terms with the idea that he was likely experiencing depression.

“Somebody like Jim Carrey or Robin Williams or certain guys who did interviews, I would see and watch, and a lot of things made sense,” he told Blavity. “You start to see the knowledge and the maturity of age that comes with time, you know? You kind of start to piece a lot of things together as time go on.”

This depression get the best of me…

— DeMar DeRozan (@DeMar_DeRozan) February 17, 2018

Not thinking much of his tweet, DeRozan logged off the app and went on about his day.

“You put your thoughts out there not thinking [what] would come from it, you know? And it was just a selfish emotion in that moment for me. I didn’t have no premeditated thoughts or sayings like, ‘Hey, this [is] gonna do that.’ It was just me. That was just how I really felt in that moment,” he said.

Although it wasn’t DeRozan’s intention, his tweet sparked an open dialogue about mental health among athletes. At that time, DeRozan’s mother, Diane DeRozan, had talked to a psychiatrist a few times and expressed to him how it shifted her perspective. Despite being happy about her progress, he wasn’t ready to speak with a professional.

“[The tweet] just opened me up to have those conversations [about] certain things you never talked about or things that was bothering you,” DeRozan said. “Everything for me after that was just a response of me accepting what it really was I may be going through and you kind of see that it becomes bigger than just you in a sense. You start to educate yourself on so many things just naturally, whether it’s through conversation, through certain advice you may see and then you start to listen to certain people differently.”

A Compton native, DeRozan grew up in an underprivileged environment, which led to some traumatic moments. If DeRozan and his family weren’t personally impacted by financial hardship, death, drug addiction, gang-related wars or police brutality, they knew someone who was. DeRozan recognized at a young age how essential it was to have positive role models.

“Having the older support system around me, just showing me the ropes and instilling a lot of morals early on I didn’t fully understand gave me a way to just always think and question things before just doing something that would put me in a bad situation,” he said. “I was always the person who paid attention to everything.”

For DeRozan, who is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, basketball was always his outlet.

“Whether it was an hour, two hours, three hours, [or] four hours playing at the park, at school, just in a gym working out, it was a complete escape from reality,” he said. “I could kind of be who I wanted to be, whether that was my favorite player, Kobe, growing up. It gave that illusion that I was escaping, I was out of it. I wasn’t around all the gang violence and I didn’t see all the negative things because I’m doing what I love to do.”

While basketball helped, DeRozan eventually grew weary of his traumas. Constantly witnessing and hearing disturbing news surrounding him planted a seed of anger when he was a kid. He’s now taking small steps to ease those feelings.

“Early on, it used to be a question of wondering why I’m mad, why I’m frustrated, or why I dislike something and not having a reason behind it,” he said. “And I think now just identifying and understanding a lot of emotions that may come out of nowhere. I think that journey of going through and becoming more self-aware of my emotions kind of helped me more than anything.”

DeRozan and Kevin Love teamed up with the NBA Cares initiative to help push forward the issue of mental health.

“I don’t think it’s enough empathy that’s given and shown,” DeRozan said. In our society, [when] you pick up the phone [and] you click on social media, it’s always something being glorified that’s negative towards a person without any empathy placed on it first and foremost.”

He added, “At the end of the day, we’re all human beings, we all have human emotions, we all feel pain the same, we all hurt the same, [and] we all go through stuff. And I think so much in the world is desensitizing society, which will lead people to get overlooked or talked about and placed in a lot of dark places they feel like they can’t get out of.”