With a home game coming up against Denver this weekend, I’ve been thinking about mental health resources here in Philly, and I just learned about something that happened here in 2000. A student named Alison Malmon was finishing her first year at the University of Pennsylvania when the unthinkable took place: Her older, and only, sibling, Brian, died by suicide.

Turns out, Brian had started having mental health issues while he was a freshman at Columbia University in New York – but he never told anyone. Maybe he thought he’d be judged, or viewed as anything other than the hardworking, high-achieving, involved young man he was always known as.

Believe it or not, back in 2000 – just 25 years ago – people didn’t talk as openly about mental health. If you went to therapy or were on medicine?

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