I read the statement from Carey Price yesterday & my jaw literally dropped.
In a sea of athletes & celebs sharing their stories recently, this guy & his family nailed “it.” Look at how different his statement is/was from others who have come out. He talked about:
– His neglect of his own MH over time.
– The build-up of what happens when we neglect it
– What that build up did to him (and essentially does to us).
– What he is doing now to work on it, with no pressure for time table on a return, but that it’s something he has to do for him & his family. He’d neglected it for far too long & it came up to bite him.
Educational, informational, inspirational.
You can’t nail this, on one short slide, better than Carey did. Digging around a little w some friends who know him…it’s no wonder his wife is connected to a PR agency. They flat out nailed the right way to do this: be open, be vulnerable, explain where they are at in the process, let everyday folks understand, no need to reveal too many details.
Think about how different this is from other shares we have seen: “I’m xyz athlete/celeb, I suffer from abc disorder name/label. If you suffer with this specific disorder name/label, you are not alone. X% of ppl suffer w this specific disorder as well.”
Those statements, while the public figures are talking about “mental health,” they place their suffering in a specific bucket that doesn’t help the masses understand MH, globally.
Carey instead wrote generally abt the cumulative build up of what happens to us when we neglect “it” over time. YES! This is what MH is. Like plaque in our arteries, ALL of us need to take notice bc “it” can take any of us down…even the best athletes in the world.
This article headline I used here: I had to search hard for – a Russian publication that wrote this. The US papers (look at the Stories share), ALL highlighted one thing: Substance Abuse. They took all Carey shared & narrowed it down to two words that sell.
MH should not be abt words that sell. MH us for ALL of us. Thanks Carey (even if the media didn’t comply), for showing us how it’s done.
