There were 320-plus kids in Kevin Love’s Lake Oswego (Ore.) High School graduating class in 2007. He estimates the school had about one counselor for every 70 students. The five-time NBA All-Star feels his counselor oversaw too many kids to truly understand his depression and anxiety, let alone adequately help him through those feelings. So Love, now 34, came to understand this dynamic, of having to go “down the hall” in school to talk about mental illness and vulnerability, as imperfect, at best.
“I was somebody who learned about sexual education, physical education, but we never really talked about what goes on between the ears and why we may feel these sort of feelings arise even at the kindergarten age or beyond that,” he says.