Utah basketball coaches Larry Krystkowiak and Lynne Roberts, and others, responding as mental health issues move to forefront

University of Utah women’s basketball head coach Lynne Roberts played her college basketball at Division II Seattle Pacific in the mid-1990s.

At the time, mental-health issues were not a widely talked-about topic, and athletic departments certainly were not employing teams of professionals to help deal with such things. We are living in a different time now, though. Mental health is often at the forefront when it comes to the wellbeing of student-athletes, and any Division I athletic department worth its salt has professionals in this area on staff.

Still, leave it to Roberts to remind everybody how far this topic has come over a generation.

“When I played in college, no one asked how I was feeling,” Roberts said. “No one really cared, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t people 20 years ago, 30 years ago that didn’t have issues.”

This topic made news in college basketball late last week when Ohio State freshman point guard DJ Carton announced on Twitter he would be taking a leave of absence from the program in order to tend to mental-health issues. This sort of announcement out of a major program would have moved the needle regardless, but it became a much bigger deal because Carton was a four-star recruit and the highest-rated Buckeye commit since 2014.

Carton’s leave of absence was a reminder that as openly discussing mental health is becoming less taboo, the responsibilities that coaches face in helping young people have radically changed over the last few years.

“First of all, I think we’re all very cognizant of this not being all about basketball,” said Utes head coach Larry Krystkowiak, who was quick to note the presence of Dr. Jonathan Ravarino, Utah’s Director of Psychology and Wellness. “It’s that we try to help everybody grow up, and I’ve shared stories of my own struggles with different things. Our players, we’ve had numerous team get-togethers where we open up and share things.”

“It’s nice that we have the resources and we have the staff that is genuinely in tune with each one of our athletes,” Roberts added. “It certainly has become more common and you have to be very, very in tune with it.”

Krystkowiak, who played for six teams across nine NBA seasons, is not naive to the fact that NBA players’ willingness to discuss and treat their own mental-health struggles can help others discuss and treat theirs.

In March 2018, five-time All-Star forward Kevin Love went public with his mental-health issues in a piece he wrote for The Players’ Tribune. Earlier that year, DeMar DeRozan, then of the Toronto Raptors, also went public with his struggles in a lengthy story in the Toronto Star, one of Canada’s largest newspapers.

Love and DeRozan, with lengthy NBA careers, career earnings in the hundreds of millions, and fans across the globe have been credited with helping widen the conversation about mental health.

“Even that, for me, in my position, knowing that those players have opened up, and asked for help, and been very transparent, it’s made it easier for me to talk to guys and share stories about what we’re going through,” Krystkowiak said. “I think that’s a big key, and we’re learning more and more about it.

“As they always say, this life deal doesn’t come with an owner’s manual, it doesn’t always just go as planned. Sometimes, we need to lean for a little bit of help on that side, for sure.”