Many professional athletes, including a number of NBA basketball players, have used social media to share their personal experiences with mental illness. This article focused on DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love, who shared their mental health experiences in 2018. This study quantitatively studied 3,336 fan responses that DeRozan and Love received on social media and found that the responses were overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, challenging the stigmatization of mental illness, and fostering an environment of acceptance for both athletes.
Going into my research, I saw social media as almost exclusively a negative factor for the mental health of athletes, thinking about the athletes that receive hateful posts and messages after a missed shot, dropped pass, strikeout, etc. This article’s research has challenged that notion, shining a light on how social media can be positive for an athlete’s mental health. I think as a public, we have a tendency to sometimes treat professional athletes as if they aren’t human. Professional athletes embody levels of physical strength and ability that the average person can only dream of attaining. They live lavish lifestyles funded by their multi-million dollar salaries. So, we can say anything derogatory that we want to them on social media, because there’s no way it can bother them, right? Yet, the truth is many prominent athletes do struggle with their mental health and sharing their struggles on social media can better allow the general public to humanize them. As a sports fan, it’s easy to criticize an athlete on social media when you view them as a robot of superhuman athleticism, and it’s a lot more difficult to criticize them when you view them as a person with feelings, struggles, and weaknesses.
Scott Parrott, Andrew C. Billings, Samuel D. Hakim & Patrick Gentile (2020) From #endthestigma to #realman: Stigma-Challenging Social Media Responses to NBA Players’ Mental Health Disclosures, Communication Reports, 33:3, 148-160, DOI: 10.1080/08934215.2020.1811365
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08934215.2020.1811365