Gyasi Mitchell’s acceptance of therapy and support for his depression began with an invitation to a park. Mitchell, 22, was lying in bed in a youth shelter in South Los Angeles. He heard Moises Rodriguez, a counselor, in the hallway outside his room announcing that a therapeutic exercise session was going to start across the street, at the South Park Recreation Center. Mitchell went to the park and joined a pickup basketball game with others from the shelter.
The other ballers were like him — unhoused, young men; mostly Black and Latino. Conversation ran shallow, Mitchell said — “What’s Up? What’s good?” — but there was a deeper sense of nonjudgement to being there. Mitchell called it “showing up for one another.”
