NBA to require teams to have mental health professionals

The league is ramping up its mental health program

Photo from NBA.com

“We are living in a time of anxiety,” said National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner Adam Silver at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “A lot of these young men are generally unhappy.”

Silver’s statements are in response to the growing clamor to create better mental health policies in the NBA, which comes after several players like Kevin Love, Keyan Dooling, and DeMar DeRozan expressed their struggles with mental health. Some action has thus been taken: According to The Athletic, the NBA will be implementing new policies that all 30 teams must follow. 

The league will detail these guidelines and policies to team officials on Sept. 12 in Chicago during their mental health and wellness meeting. One of the rumored policies is to require each team to have “one to two” licensed professionals on retainer. This is in addition to having a licensed psychiatrist available to players. 

Teams are also going to be required to have confidentiality policies and to develop a “written plan” that anticipates such emergencies. These policies are the NBA’s latest efforts to ramp up its mental health and wellness program, which was established last year. 

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