Anneli Maley’s inspirational journey from a psychiatric ward to an Opals World Cup berth

Opals bench forward Anneli Maley is happy, healthy and successful. Yet she nearly quit basketball before she’d finished school, after a terrifying episode that put her in a psychiatric ward.

Opals bench forward Anneli Maley is happy, healthy and successful. Yet she nearly quit basketball before she’d finished school, after a terrifying episode that put her in a psychiatric ward. Picture: Getty Images

Reigning WNBL MVP Anneli Maley will make her World Cup debut for the Australian Opals after fearing she would never play again.

Maley was one of our brightest rising stars when she had a mental breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric ward at the age of 17.

On Thursday when the Opals begin their World Cup campaign against France, Maley will complete her incredible journey back from depression.

It’s testament to her resilience and persistence to overcome adversity.

“When I say that my lows were low, I was real low,” Maley told Code Sports.

“I was diagnosed with depression and then a panic disorder, and then I had some pretty aggressive bouts of anxiety disorder at the same time.

“So, it was a struggle figuring out all of that stuff at the age of 16. It was really difficult.”’

An exceptional young talent with a famous basketball surname, Maley quit basketball before she had even finished school.

That’s what she told her broken younger self, anyway: that she would never play again.

Anneli Maley will complete a remarkable comeback for the Australian Opals. Picture: Getty Images

A fixture in national teams since her early teens, Maley was 15 when she moved to the Australian Institute of Sport.

The daughter of NBL 270-gamer Paul Maley, now Basketball Australia’s executive general manager, she was 17 and back home in Melbourne when she was admitted to a psychiatric ward from the emergency department after another panic attack that had mirrored the physical symptoms of a cardiac arrest.

Shaking. Racing heart. Blurred vision. Fainting.

During that distressing period, while also trying to complete Year 12, she was on bed rest for a while, housebound for months, estranged from basketball for over a year and stricken with overwhelming anxiety in any social setting from the classroom to the supermarket to the bus stop.
Maley had returned from Canberra in a terrible state. Then things got even worse.
“I spent, I think, five days in a psych ward at the hospital just pretty much because physically and mentally I had to be monitored,” Maley says.

“Physically I was really thin and I was really weak and I wasn’t eating because I was depressed, so I didn’t have the right nutrients, and I was on a drip.”

Australian Opals young gun Anneli Maley.

A little more than six years later, Maley is in a happier place after using her greatest challenge as motivation to transform her life and career for the better.

Her story of resilience has inspired countless people, including Opals legend Michele Timms, who can’t wait to see rising forward on the World Cup stage.

Timms says Maley is the perfect selection in a period when the Australian women are trying to reconnect and re-establish their identity as Opals post the disappointment of consecutive Olympic quarter-final exits.

“Because she personifies what it means to be an Opal,” Timms said.

“Back in my day it was that relentless persistence and an ability to handle adversity.

“Also, being a defensive orientated player was high on what it meant to be recognised as an Opal.

“Anneli has displayed old school Opals traits and her story is inspirational on so many levels.

“With mental health being at the forefront of society at the moment, she is a great example of working her way through the hard times.

“She is a terrific role model for any young player.”

WNBL MVP ➡ WNBA ➡ Opals Debut 🙌

“Everything I experience in the basketball world, I take it, learn from it and grow from it" - Anneli Maley on returning home, and pulling on the green and gold.

FULL STORY: https://t.co/mBthv7z76v#WeAreBasketballpic.twitter.com/mDQJNNeOIw

— Basketball Australia (@BasketballAus) May 31, 2022

Armed with antidepressants and stronger coping mechanisms, 24-year-old Maley is now open and vocal about her personal struggles and the need to talk about mental health.

That includes sexuality, for her own positive experiences since coming out are not, she knows, the same stories of support and acceptance that everyone can tell.

“It really breaks my heart when I hear stories of otherwise, but that’s another thing about being an openly gay female basketball player that does help,” said Maley, who won the 2021/2022 WNBL MVP after averaging 19.8 points and 15.7 rebounds across her 16 games for the Bendigo Spirit.

Maley’s mental health issues, she can see now, stemmed from not having a sense of self outside basketball, especially when she entered the awkward space between gun junior and wannabe pro.

Didn’t know who she was. Looked in the mirror and didn’t understand or like what she saw.
Bruised ego meet identity crisis.

Opals bench forward Anneli Maley is happy, healthy and successful. Yet she nearly quit basketball before she’d finished school, after a terrifying episode that put her in a psychiatric ward. Picture: Getty Images

She would look up to the likes of Steph Talbot, Penny Taylor and Jenna O’Hea, and want to be them.

Only later, with the help of sports psychologist Jacqui Louder, whom she credits with saving her life, did the realisation come that she could just try to add the best parts of those players and their games to her own.

And still be Anneli Maley. For she was enough.

She left the AIS in October, 2016. Did not walk back into a basketball stadium or touch a ball until December, 2017.

“I thought I’d just come home and take a month off, and then once I got home I really kind of spiralled and fell really deep into that depressive cycle. My panic attacks got really, really bad, and the last thing I could do was pick up a basketball. It wasn’t just mentally that I wasn’t ready; physically I wasn’t capable, either.”

After US college stints in Oregon and Texas, she returned home to complete a Bachelor of Arts in graphic and digital design and resume her national league career in 2019. Healthy, happy, wiser, and comfortable in her own skin.

Anneli Maley during the WNBL season with the Bendigo Spirit. Photo: Kelly Defina/Getty Images.

It was also during her time in Adelaide that she started a new romantic relationship with current Lightning guard Marena Whittle.

Four years on, Maley and Whittle’s relationship is prospering.

“I’m very fortunate that I’ve always been surrounded by people who have made me feel supported with my sexuality,” said Maley, who played four WNBA games with the Chicago Sky this season.

“I have had those conversations with later-teen kids and even some of my teammates about what that means to be true to yourself.

“That’s something I always think is tied up within mental health, just being honest about who you are.”

Originally published as Anneli Maley’s inspirational journey from a psychiatric ward to an Opals World Cup berth