Tackling depression.

AuthorZirin, Dave
PositionEdge of Sports

Thank you, Herschel Walker. The retired NFL pro bowler and former Heisman trophy winner said something that needed to be said.

More than 3,500 former NFL players are suing the league right now for suffering from post-concussive syndromes. But Walker raised another point that shadows this lawsuit: depression.

"The NFL has a problem," he told USA Today. "It has to determine the difference between concussions and depression. If players lose their money, or wife, or children because of what they're doing, they'll act different. But you can't throw everything on concussions."

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Here, Walker is attempting to discuss what is still a third-rail issue in men's sports even in the twenty-first century: depression and mental health. Everyone wants to talk about concussions, ripped knee ligaments, or torn rotator cuffs, but depression is still taboo. To be depressed is to be weak, to be soft, and to be outside the toxic male ethos that even today rules men's professional sports.

Walker is challenging the rather twisted idea that we can safely talk about depression and related mental health issues only if they arise from getting your head bashed in. This is lunacy.

As any mental health expert will tell you, depression arises from a relationship between the chemicals in your brain and the stability--or lack of stability--in your environment. For people predisposed chemically to depression, it's extremely important to have a stable routine, therapy, and a support system of friends.

By contrast, consider the life of a professional athlete: no stability, you live out of a suitcase away from your family, and your friends can be traded to another team at just about any time. In addition, your therapist in many cases could be employed by your team, which ethically boggles the mind.

Yes, there is also money, drugs, and anonymous sex, but the dark side of that is bankruptcy, divorce, and using recreational drugs as a form of medication. If that sounds farfetched, please consider that 75 percent of former NFL players end up broke, divorced, or unemployed. Raising the issue of how mental health issues create these...

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