Chamique Holdsclaw Discusses Mental Health and Suicide Prevention

For­mer WNBA play­er and three-time NCAA cham­pi­on, Chamique Hold­sclaw spoke at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut dur­ing UConn’s sui­cide pre­ven­tion week as a keynote speaker.

                                                                                  

In her stir­ring speech, she invit­ed the audi­ence to look at her career that was entan­gled with her life­long bat­tle of men­tal ill­ness. Hold­sclaw near­ly end­ed her career and life because she did­n’t get the help she needed.

 Now that she is com­fort­able with telling her sto­ry, she has become a men­tal health advo­cate and goes around the coun­try to dis­cuss her accom­plish­ments, set­backs, and her path to find­ing men­tal stability.

 

“If you don’t ask for help you will not get it” said Holdsclaw.

Hold­sclaw start­ed her speech with her hum­ble begin­nings in Queens, New York City. There she lived with her par­ents who suf­fered from addic­tion prob­lems. Since her par­ents were unfit to care for her, she was whisked away to her grandmother’s house in the projects. The social and finan­cial change of going from a mid­dle class envi­ron­ment to the projects took a toll on Hold­sclaw.  Said she had to find her own path to hap­pi­ness and that was basketball.

 

“Bas­ket­ball was my cop­ing mechanism…my drug,” Hold­sclaw said.

 

Bas­ket­ball was an escape from her life and it made her hap­py. It gave her a chance to take out her tem­per tantrums on the court. Her time on the court was worth it because she had a chance to go to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee. There she won three nation­al cham­pi­onships. Her coach, Pat Sum­mitt, not only guid­ed her the court but helped her tran­si­tion from the diverse city of New York to a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white uni­ver­si­ty in Tennessee.

                While in school, Holdsclaw’s grand­moth­er updat­ed her of her father’s men­tal state. She was informed that he was detained for hitch­hik­ing, and was sent to a men­tal insti­tu­tion, after being diag­nosed with schizophrenia.

 Hold­sclaw said she want­ed to com­pre­hend her father’s ill­ness, but began to doubt her own san­i­ty. Said she con­tin­ued to resist to look­ing for pos­si­ble treat­ment, due to ongo­ing stig­ma and stereo­types regard­ing men­tal health illnesses.

                After grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, see was recruit­ed to the WNBA to play for the Wash­ing­ton Mys­tics. Hold­sclaw won the Rook­ie of the Year award but she said it did not sat­is­fy her because her team failed to win many games.

 Her depres­sion wors­ened fol­low­ing the death of her grand­moth­er, and she iso­lat­ed her­self from her team­mates and social life, she said

                Again Sum­mitt came back to help her and after a vis­it Hold­sclaw sought pro­fes­sion­al help. She start­ed tak­ing pre­scribed lithi­um as she con­tin­ued to play pro­fes­sion­al basketball.

In 2007 Hold­sclaw retired from pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball but then returned lat­er for two more sea­sons until she had an injury that end­ed her career on the court.

Though her career was over, her men­tal ill­ness still went on, she was los­ing con­trol of her­self. Hold­sclaw said she didn’t know who I was any­more. She was at the edge and ulti­mate­ly attempt­ed suicide.

In 2012 Hold­sclaw end­ed up in jail for attack­ing the car of a for­mer part­ner with a base­ball bat. Hold­sclaw said being in jail allowed her to see her­self at rock bot­tom. It gave her the time to reflect and influ­enced her deci­sion to will­ing­ly seek help on her own. She said, the men­tal break led to her being diag­nosed with bipo­lar disorder.

She said, as she received pro­fes­sion­al treat­ment and made health­i­er life choic­es, her depres­sion does not take over her life any­more, she said. Since she has found men­tal sta­bil­i­ty she now has the strength to share her sto­ry across the nation.

“You are the new gen­er­a­tion, the new voice,” Hold­sclaw said. She remind­ed the stu­dents that they are the next gen­er­a­tion and that they have to speak out about men­tal ill­ness and seek help when they feel they need it.

The speech was well received by the audi­ence it helped stu­dents think about men­tal health and its com­mon­al­i­ty among peo­ple. Jeffny Pal­ly, 19, sopho­more at UConn said,

“Real­ly inter­est­ing espe­cial­ly because she is well known and decid­ed to come to our school. It was brave of her to talk about her ill­ness. I learned life is like a wave. “

The audi­ence enjoyed how Hold­sclaw stepped out of her­self to expose her flaws Riya Abra­ham, 20, a junior at UConn said she enjoyed the talk.

 “Dif­fer­ent from oth­er talks because she is human­iz­ing her­self despite how suc­cess­ful she became, she was being real with us,” Abra­ham said.