The Kevin Love Fund and NAMI created a free lesson to help teen athletes talk about mental health.

Athletes can learn that asking for help is a sign of strength.

Coaches and teammates can help create cultures where athletes feel safe speaking up.

This month, I caught back up with the Kevin Love Fund (KLF), founded by NBA champion and mental health advocate Kevin Love, to discuss its new collaboration with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

The two organizations recently launched Real Talk: Strength in Seeking Support, a free lesson designed to help teen athletes discuss emotional challenges, recognize when they or a teammate may need support, and feel more comfortable asking for help.

The goal of the program is to build team cultures that promote openness around mental health by:

Helping teen athletes build mental health awareness,

Strengthening emotional skills, and

Creating more supportive team environments.

NAMI CEO Daniel Gillison and KLF director of education Ellie Foster, who developed the lesson with NAMI advisors, took a moment to share their thoughts on the new program.

Foster took me inside the lesson, which incorporates research-backed strategies and expert guidance for destigmatizing conversations about mental health between teammates and coaches.

Foster emphasized the importance of normalizing conversations about mental health through short videos of athletes sharing stories of resilience, which can inspire others and help teens feel less alone. Drawing on research demonstrating the role of educator vulnerability in normalizing emotional discussions on athletic teams, the lesson encourages coaches to model similar openness (Foster, 2023).

The lesson also engages athletes in hands-on activities that allow them to practice expressing their emotions through creative outlets (e.g., writing, creating playlists), which is supported by research on arts-based approaches to supporting mental health (Stuckey & Nobel, 2010).

Ultimately, the lesson........

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