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Brandon Marshall Dedicated to Eradicating the Stigma Around Mental Health

By Brandon Marshall, The Player's Tribune, 05/17/18, 12:00PM PDT

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The point I want to make is that I’m still the same exact person today that I was back then. I still have the same feelings and emotions. The only difference is that now, I know how to deal with my emotions the right way.

It was 2011 and I was in a group therapy session at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. It was an informal self-assessment session where you were basically supposed to tell the group about what you were feeling and talk about what had happened to you the day before. We were all sitting in a circle. To my right, there was a young lady with bandages on her arms, and the wraps were soaked in blood. She had tried to harm herself the day before. Another young lady told the group that she had attempted suicide the night before.

I just sat there, in shock.