I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday that grew up in San Diego. He said he thought Seau's depression was similar to Post Traumatic Syndrome that someone could suffer after no longer being in a war/military. Thoughts? He also said he thought he shot himself in the chest because he wants his brain to be studied to reveal the damage it had endured through playing football in the NFL. Thoughts? Sorry if this is a sensitive subject for some.
Junior Seau suicide...
- Thread starter DAWG61
- Start date
Peopletake the suicide way outeveryday and this one is no more tragic then any other. I don't really feel sorry for them. I do feel sorry for the wives, husband and kids they leave behind. The only difference with this suicide is you have a group of people who will use it for their agenda. Usually they don't give a damn about the person who committedsuicide. If you put things into perspective we all have a death sentence. The way we die will be different but life is one thing you are not going to escaped from with out dying. He just chose to take this way out. I know I sound harsh but I seen men die who did not want to die and that is more tragic to me.
but I do know that there's change in the air. When you have former players slapping lawsuits on the NFL's desk, hall of famers saying that they won't let their children play the game, and guys dying in their mid-40's, you can just see what's coming and it isn't going to be pretty. It's impossible to speculate exactly what those changes are going to be, but I don't think the game that we watch even 5 years from now is going to look like what we see today. The circumstances behind the changes are completely different, but I'm afraid that the NFL is going to look a lot like the NBA in a few years and by that, I mean that players will essentially be penalized for playing defense. It will be a high scoring sport and the days of 13-7 scores are coming to an end.
at this point, there just isn't enough information to know.
Seau's family and friends have said he showed no signs of depression or problems. That's strange to me.
Seau's family and friends have said he showed no signs of depression or problems. That's strange to me.
So because your friend GREW UP in San Diego,he/she is an expert on Junior Seau's death in your eyes?DAWG61 said:
They're going to study Seau's brain, and we know they're going to find significant amounts of plaque that is normally found in alzheimer's patients. We won't know how much, if any, that contributed to his mental problems, but I think there are enough ex football players that go through personality changes later in life that they at least deserve the benefit of the doubt on whether they were really physically capable of understanding their choice.
I have heard this speculation about the way he committed suicide discussed from other sources as well. It is way to difficult to speculate why he committed suicide in the first place to think he may have shot himself in the chest to let his brain be analyzed. Who knows what was going through his mind at that point? No one but Junior knows.
If I had to offer an explanation I would probably say he didn't want his family to have to endure a closed coffin funeral.
If I had to offer an explanation I would probably say he didn't want his family to have to endure a closed coffin funeral.
It's a sad situation and not making light of the brain injury but he did contact his ex wife and kids and told them he loved them before he did it and he shot him self in the chest, not thehead so that tells me he was not out of it completely. He did have some thought.
Your thought processes are a physical/chemical process. You physically screw up the brain, you don't know how it's going to work (or not). Sometimes it reacts in strange ways. Yeah, he had some thought but it's kind of hard to blame him for not playing with a full deck when we know it's pretty likely that he wasn't playing with a full deck.
so it isn't odd to you the greater rates of suicide among former NFL players (and war vets) than the general population? you don't find PTS and years of head injuries as at least a good chance at influencing this behavior?<div>
</div><div>simply saying that people do it every day (they do, but not at these rates) is turning a blind eye towards the things that are contributing to the problem.</div>
</div><div>simply saying that people do it every day (they do, but not at these rates) is turning a blind eye towards the things that are contributing to the problem.</div>
I don't know what it is. It most likely is brain damage but it could alsobe them having trouble readjusting to normal life. Exspcially vets. It took a year after coming home from desert storm for me to readjust. I use to wake up in the middle of the night fighting and I really did not do anything during that. Away from home continueingtraining and the thought of dying. I worked in a claim center for my company after hurricane Katrina and it took a year for me to get over that. Talking to people who lost everything weighed heavenly on me. As far as football one day you are on top of the world. You have money and fame. You have everything you want and you can do almost anything you want then the next day it is gone. Many times you have lost your wife, kids and money. I saw somewhere that after retirement 80% of professional athletes are broke. There are many things that can contribute to these suicides. They need to study the brain of these guys to see if there is a problem and I am not gong to disagree with what you said. I do think there are other things that can contribute to the problems. Football players probably have the shortest playing time and it usually ends short where As baseball and basketball those guys have seems like longer career and they might be able to adjust better then Football players do to the longer period of playing time. I really don't know, I am just guessing i just hope this is not used to push an agenda.
baseball and basketball players also don't have drastically shortened life spans in general. football players have an avg life span of something like 55 years, and OL/DL have lifespans of only 52 years. obviously the weight of the linemen help shorten their lives, but that alone isn't enough to explain a 20+ year reduction in lifeexpectancyfrom the avg citizen.