Male alumnus Howard Fleming Jr. encouraging others to get help after his experience with depression

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The signs were there for Howard Fleming Jr. He just couldn’t see them.

“Most people look at me as a cool kid, everything is going good,” Fleming said. “But even the best of the best, they go through things.”

As a senior guard for Male, Fleming just wasn’t himself — quiet, irritable, distracted.

Male Assistant Principal Keith Cathey is a member of the Bulldogs’ coaching staff and a mentor to Fleming.

“When I talked to him, I saw a lot of the same issues that I had went through when I was depressed myself,” Cathey said.

“He could read me like a book,” Fleming said. “He noticed me doing a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t normally do. He told me straight up, ‘It’s cool to talk to somebody. Go get help.’”

So, he did.

“My first session, I was real hesitant,” Fleming said. “I really wasn’t fond of letting people close to me, letting people know what I’m going through and things like that. When I first got in there, I didn’t tell (my counselor) everything.”

Eventually Fleming did open up, and when things got better, he decided not to keep his journey private, taking to Twitter to encourage others to also get help.

“For my neighborhood, we’re just friends,” Fleming said. “We don’t go tell people our business. Everything we did, or went through, it was to us. That was my whole goal of letting people know it’s cool to go get help. You can be the top of the top, the best of the best and still go through stuff and need help.”

“As athletes, a lot of times, we’re told to just keep going, keep going, keep going and not understanding that the way we have to push our body and also rest our body, we have to push our mind and rest our mind as well,” Cathey said.

Now, in his first year with the Illinois State basketball team, Fleming continues to stay in touch with his counselor in Louisville. While he continues to monitor his own mental health, Fleming is reminding others to do the same.

“Me getting my help from that person, I knew they were doing the right thing by helping me,” Fleming said. “So, it’s only right that I go out and try to help as many people as I can.”