AJ Lee has been open and honest with her mental health journey and being and advocate for others. Her return to WWE last September was something that many fans never thought would actually happen. That moment alone opened a whole bunch of doors for Lee to continue to discuss mental health both on TV and off.
In an interview with The Match-Up with Aliyah on iHeart Women’s Sports, Lee discusses here return to WWE and how proud she is that the stigma around mental health has made a change for the better.
“I’m really proud of how far it’s come because… I’ve been pretty open about how like my last year wrestling was my worst mental health year. I looked like everything in the world and I’m champion and all this stuff, but I was so deeply depressed, and part of, you know, my journey after was finding what’s the right treatment for me and becoming a mental health advocate and becoming a keynote speaker and really trying to send this message to not just people in sports, but also, communities of color, like, us, like, as a Latina, we don’t talk about our mental health. It’s not a thing that’s accepted in our culture, and there’s so many barriers to treatment.
So that’s been, a huge part of the journey is sort of opening up people’s eyes to when you come from a certain socioeconomic background or cultural background or there’s language barriers or, you’re in a health care desert. There’s all these different barriers just to get in the door, and then to not even be represented in clinical trials and research. It’s been this 10 year journey of trying to sort of make people aware of how important that is on so many different levels, and then to come back into wrestling and see that they have also opened up their mind. When the first thing I wanted to make sure was going to work was, is my mental health protected? Do I feel safe here? Are you guys aware of what that means to need you know, mental health time off or sort of just like, is that something that is a priority for that to be a priority? The conversation was really cool in a way that I couldn’t even reveal my diagnosis 10 years ago, but now it’s, you know, a part of my contract. So that is a really cool, beautiful thing. I hope all sports, you know, can incorporate that because it is such a a different, you know, like you were saying, you do need such exceptional internal health and mental health to just perform safely. So I was so genuinely and pleasantly surprised to see that shift.”
Lee’s last match was at WrestleMania in April where she dropped the WWE Women’s IC Title back to Becky Lynch. Since then, it has been reported there is no immediate plans for Lee, but she is still with the company.
