Stephen A Smith recently shared his own experiences with mental health struggles when discussing Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott‘s openness about the mental health challenges he has faced.
Football fans know Stephen A Smith is first person who will harp on anything regarding the demise of the Dallas Cowboys. The ESPN personality constantly goes viral for his commentary on the defeat of “America’s team.” He is often critical of Prescott’s play and it is often said with another Quarterback at the helm, Dallas possibly could achieve more.
However, Smith’s criticism took a more somber turn Sunday night when a non-Cowboys fan friend urged him to temper his criticism following the Cowboys’ loss to the 49ers. Specifically, this friend pointed out the battles with depression and anxiety that Dak has candidly shared, prompting Smith to candidly discuss his own struggles with depression on his podcast this week.
While the outspoken Smith says he’s just doing his job, he does have compassion.
“I felt compelled to adopt that position,” he said. “That’s not going to stop me from doing my job. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it ain’t a damn mongoose. If you played like garbage, I gotta say you played bad. But there’s a glee and a joyfulness that I take from the Dallas Cowboys stinking up the joint because Dallas Cowboys fans get on my last damn nerves…. It’s oxymoronic to use those two words in the same sentence but it’s applicable. As serious as I am, I’m just having fun. It’s sports.”
He continued, “I’m a human being first.”
“…And believe it or not, even though it doesn’t seem that way on television or what have you, I do have compassion all the time. And I do think there are times when it’s important to showcase that and put it on display, because God knows, the world that we’re living in today, it’s needed.”
Stephen A. felt compelled to open up about his own emotions and express his ability to empathize with the quarterback’s feelings, drawing on his personal experience of losing his mother a few years ago. In 2020, Prescott candidly shared his journey of dealing with mental health challenges amid the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a period marked by significant personal tragedies in Prescott’s life, as his mother had succumbed to colon cancer in 2013, and tragically, in 2020, his brother, Jace, took his own life.
“You know the scary part, that really really hit me? It was when he said it was a couple of days before his brother passed(that he began experiencing depression)”, Smith mentioned. “He talked about how when he lost his mom seven years earlier, his brother was having trouble then. If I’m being totally honest, I know the feeling.”
“Anybody who knows me knows that on June 1, 2017, to be exact, Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, anybody who knows me knows that day is. That was the day I lost the greatest woman I’ve ever known. I lost the greatest human being I’ve ever known. And that was Janet Smith, my mother.”
“I never thought about killing myself. But for two years, every single day at some moment in time, I wished I was dead. That is how and my life was without my mother.”
Smith revealed he went to therapy and, at the time, was single and felt like the only person whom he received unconditional love from was gone. Smith brought attention to the stigma black people have within therapy and it was a powerful message on Tuesday, World Mental Health Day. You often don’t know what someone is growing through, and it was brave of Stephen A. to open up about his battles as well.
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