Utah women's basketball star Emily Potter goes public about her battle with depression

Utah senior women’s basketball star Emily Potter decided that she’s done being afraid and she also wants to help others.

A 6-foot-6 native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Potter and her three senior classmates celebrated senior day on Sunday. They earned a win in their final home game in the Jon M. Huntsman Center, and Potter has had the most prominent career of the group. She became the first player in the program’s history to score at least 1,500 points, grab at least 900 rebounds and block 200 or more shots.

On Tuesday, Potter authored a nearly 1,500-word essay in The Daily Utah Chronicle in which she opened up in a deeply heartfelt and detailed way about her battle with depression that at times this season almost robbed her of her love for the game as well as her passion for life.

“I just wanted a way to help, and I was kind of stuck,” Potter told The Salt Lake Tribune after her essay was published. “I didn’t really know what to do. I’m so far from home. I didn’t know how to help the situation. Mental illness, I think with the stigma surrounding it the best thing you can do is let people know that they’re not alone. Everyone sharing their stories hopefully ignites more people sharing their stories and everyone realizes that it’s a real thing and there’s something you can do about it and it doesn’t have to consume you.”

Potter’s essay comes on the heels of a football season in which Utah football players Alex Whittingham, son of coach Kyle Whittingham, and All-American kicker Matt Gay have both publicly shared their own battles with mental illness.

In her piece, Potter writes that the symptoms of depression had been present for years. Though she didn’t really know, initially, how to identify it. Eventually, it became clear, but then she struggled with acknowledging what she was dealing with.

The suicide of a close friend this past October coincided with Potter sinking to a low point during the fall and into the winter. She describes in her essay that she found herself for the first time experiencing a lack of passion when she woke up each morning. In December, she went to the university’s sports psychologist for help. Potter described the act of reaching out for help as “scary” and wrote it was a step she was “petrified” to even take.

“We talk about ending the stigma, and it’s even hard to explain,” Potter said. “I don’t know if you don’t want to feel weak or if you don’t want to have to ask for help, but the stigma is definitely there. It’s really hard to describe why most people don’t even want to talk about it. You know, it’s personal. People don’t want to burden others or make a big deal about it or admit, I guess to myself, that it was real. That I’d have to deal with it, face it.”

Up until that point, Potter hadn’t spoken a word to anyone about what she’d been going through. Potter, who doubles as a sports writer for The Chronicle, told a small number of people about her depression. She told her teammate Wendy Anae and a close friend from back home as well as her own parents. Potter said many of her teammates and coaches first found out by reading the essay when it was published online Tuesday and which Potter shared on all of her social media accounts.

“I wanted to think of a way to try to help and honor my friend,” Potter said. “I was thinking about telling my story, how to do it, when to post it, where to post it. I write for The Chronicle, and it just so happened that the theme for the paper coming up was mental health.

“I don’t think I was quite ready at the time to share my story, but that opportunity — I just couldn’t pass it up. I felt like it was a really good platform to be able to do it in the school newspaper, and then they would have the resources to share it online and in the paper and I could get it out in a bigger way. I jumped on that opportunity then, and I’m really glad I did.”

In her essay, Potter describes the act of simply getting out of bed as taking all the strength she could muster, putting on a facade and pretending that she felt fine, even while shouldering the tasks of being a student-athlete that at times felt almost herculean and extremely mentally taxing.

“My first reaction was I was just incredibly proud of her,” said Utes coach Lynne Roberts, who found out about Potter’s battle on Tuesday by reading the essay. “I really was. That was the first reaction I had, it was like, ‘Wow.’ It was after practice I went up and I was just looking at my Twitter feed and I saw it immediately and thought wow. It takes a lot of bravery to do that. It’s these types of things that get people to understand things they don’t understand.”

Roberts said she expressed to Potter that she wished she’d known earlier and been able to support Potter more, but Roberts also stressed the she was impressed by Potter’s courage. Roberts said when people show vulnerability like Potter did “it just makes you love them more.”

“I think it’s pretty cool, and I think that’s how change happens, I really do,” Roberts said. “One Emily Potter story at a time, this is how change happens. So it’s cool to kind of know her so well and kind of see her take such a leap of faith and make an impact. It’s pretty neat. That’s what I told her [Tuesday], it’s pretty impressive what being brave can do sometimes.”

In the first 12 hours after sharing her story, Potter received messages of support from her teammates and coaches, members of the basketball community and the Pac-12. She said people she’d never spoken to before contacted her to share their own stories and thanked her for writing the piece.

“If there’s one person that feels like it helped them then that’s my mission in this,” Potter said. “I think I accomplished that.”

As for her experience on the court, Potter wrote that she thought the self-critical approach that has helped her reach her current level may have also been one of the things that worked against her mental state and led to her second-guessing every decision she’d make.

This season, Potter adopted a different approach. Instead of being hyper-critical, her outlook shifted to simply working hard, having fun and accepting that mistakes are part of the game.

“In the fall and in the winter, it was hard,” Potter said. “But I feel like now I’m definitely getting back to more of myself. The season is winding down, so I’m just trying to make the most of it and have fun.”