“An Injury like Any Other”: Counter Story, Mental Health Discourse, and Liz Cambage

Abstract

Recently, more elite athletes have publicly disclosed their mental health experiences in a variety of media texts. In 2019, Australian WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) player Liz Cambage, who self-identifies as biracial, revealed her experiences with depression, anxiety, substance abuse and panic attacks that have interrupted her professional career multiple times. For communication studies scholars, Cambage’s discourse, we must examine it because Black women are frequently encouraged to compartmentalize their emotions and mental health stressors instead of expressing them. It is critical to examine this discourse for WNBA players who spend most of their time away from home as they participate in multiple professional leagues every year. Using Critical Race Theory, specifically the concept of a counter story, this essay argues that Cambage’s mediated mental health disclosures function as resistance to stereotypes about Black women and mental health.

Keywords:

• Mental health
• CRT
• counter story WNBA
• celebrity health disclosures
• Black women

Notes

1 Stressors can include “athletes being channeled into specific sports at younger ages, a change in sport and life demands, young athletes with fewer psychological coping skills, rule changes by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and professional sport that permit recruiting young athletes at an earlier age, and often a decreased emphasis on young athletes independently and effectively resolving their own life issues” (Bauman, 2016, p. 135)

2 Mental health is “the absences of mental illness such as depression or anxiety” (Westerhof & Keyes, 2010, p. 110).

3 Mental illness is “a health condition that changes a person’s thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning” (“Information about mental,” 2007, para. 1).

4 Chuka Onwumechili and the editorial staff at the Howard Journal of Communication, the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and time, and Dr. Evan Brody for his feedback on this draft. The essay largely written while teaching and parenting from home in 2020-21 - thank to you to my patient partner and resourceful child for supporting me.