PERTH Lynx basketball player Imani McGee-Stafford knows all too well how debilitating mental health can be.
The 25-year-old Los Angeles recruit is comfortable talking about her experience with depression and attempting to take her own life three times.
“I suffer from bipolar and I didn’t figure it out until I was an adult, but growing up I was very depressed,” she said.
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READ NOW“I’ve been institutionalised and I didn’t grow up in an environment where mental health was taken seriously or have the language to depict what was wrong”.
McGee-Stafford is a The Magic Coat ambassador – a program that provides young children with social and emotional skills to help deal with life’s ebbs and flows.
Mother of two and qualified teacher Di Wilcox wrote the book The Magic Coat to help parents empower their children with strategies for dealing with worry, anxiety, friendship issues, anger management and bullying issues faced by children today.
“It has to start from a young age, from mental health to sexual education, because if our kids do encounter problems in those areas and they’re uncomfortable about coming to adults in their life to speak about it, then that perpetuates the problem,” McGee-Stafford said.
Visit https://themagiccoat.com/.