Michael Beasley

I come not to criticize or praise Michael Beasley, but to empathize with him.
Yahoo Sports is reporting the former Kansas State basketball star, now a member of the NBA Miami Heat, is being treated for depression-related issues at a Houston rehabilitation facility. The Associated Press is reporting the same contention.

When I read those accounts today, I wanted to throw up.

Why?

Because I’ve been there. Three years ago, I spent a night in a psychiatric care facility under observation for depression.

It may have been the worst night of my life. They took my shoestrings, my belt. Informed doctors and nurses take depression seriously. I felt exactly how Beasley apparently felt when he left a cry for help on an Internet account:

"Feelin like it's not worth livin!!!!!!! I'm done" and "I feel like the whole world is against me. I can't win for losin’.”

It doesn’t matter why you feel that low. It matters only that you do. And trust me, you do.

I spent only the one night under lock and key, of my own volition. I spent several weeks in day-long group therapy sessions and it is those sessions that I honestly will tell you saved my life.

My last day of group therapy, I told my fellow sufferers that I would carry a part of each of them around with me for the rest of my life. The part that helped me gain perspective again.

It is why I’m sharing my experience. I was helped off a ledge by others sharing their experiences with me.

I don’t begin to know a thing about what demons are chasing Michael Beasley, if indeed there are any. Depression’s causes and symptoms are as varied as the different people you’ll meet walking down the street.

Some depressives are alcoholics or drug addicts. Many, like me, are not.
For me, depression was - and on some days still can be - measured by the certainty that beneath my feet, just under the ground upon which I stand, lurks a deep, dark lake knowing no horizon.

Its surface is not ruffled by waves, or even a ripple. But to descend into the dark’s caress is to give up all hope. Loss of hope, I contend, beggars the loss of life.
If Michael Beasley is teetering over that abyss, then I pray he receives the help I received. I pray we let him seek that with the understanding I was granted by people at The Kansas City Star, by family, by friends.

It is the least we all could do.

By Mike DeArmond

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