In a new interview with Toronto Star, Toronto Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan revealed that he's been suffering from depression and anxiety. Hoping that his honesty and openness about mental health will help others going through similar struggles, he explained, “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.”
Earlier this month, the 28-year-old Compton native tweeted about a line from Kevin Gates' "Tomorrow," prompting him to open up. “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,” he said.
"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," he said of his depression. He added that basketball often gets him through some of the rougher patches. "This is real stuff. That’s why I look at every person I encounter the same way. I don’t care who you are. You can be the smallest person off the street or you could be the biggest person in the world, I’m going to treat everybody the same, with respect."
He hopes that by being more open about his own mental health, others will seek the help they need. “It’s not nothing I’m against or ashamed of. Now, at my age, I understand how many people go through it. 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.”
