Here we are again, reliving a tragic tale of a promising
professional athlete with seemingly everything to gain, ending his life. This
is becoming an all too common story. In this instance, not only did Kansas City
Chief Linebacker, Javon Belcher kill himself, but he also killed his girlfriend
and mother of his infant daughter.
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| Kasandra Perkins & Javon Belcher |
There are some pretty tough, and I must say, uneducated
questions being posed right now that if not properly addressed, can fuel more
ignorance and do very little to improve the current situation. It is time to
bridge the gap between professional sports organizations and their understanding
of mental illness and how the pressures and uncertainties of a life as a
professional athlete can potentially be dynamically volatile if not properly
addressed.
It is important to understand that this article is not meant
in any way to be a tool for self-diagnosis of any mental illness, but is a
general answer to some specific questions and a precursor to developing proper
paradigms for dealing with all types of psychosis. Do not attempt to diagnose any
current condition on your own. Seek the support of a licensed professional.
This is not a treatise devised to release Javon Belcher or
any other person who causes harm to themselves and others from personal
responsibility. Unfortunately this culture functions through a paradigm of
finding blame. The placement of blame never brings about a resolution or
closure; it simply allows the world to satisfy its need to point the finger. It
has been said that those who complain and find blame should submit with their
claim their proposed solution. It is the hopes of this author that the article
will open the door for debate and inspire the yearning for a deeper understanding
of what took place on that dreadful day and how it impacted more people than
anyone will ever know.
When Jovan Belcher discharged that weapon, killing his
girlfriend, and later taking his own life in the presence of Kansas City Chiefs
General Manager, Scott Pioli and Head Coach, Romeo Crennel, he literally
initiated a traumatic windstorm whose impact will not be able to be quantified
any time soon. Death of any kind directly or indirectly impacts those in its
periphery.
In the multitudinous flurry of questions surrounding this
event, one prodigiously important matter is sort of placed on the sidelines (no
pun intended). The question may be asked by few and pondered by many, but are
we as a culture truly looking to answer this question and take the necessary
action to insure that the risk of something like this happening again
diminishes greatly. The question referenced here is: What makes a person that
is seemingly in control and has everything to live for go completely against
their personality into this “darkness” to commit these horrific acts of
violence? How this question is answer and the gravity given to that answer will
give enlightenment to the numerous other questions being posed right now.
It must be understood that in addressing this issue there is
no intent to produce a technical paper on psychosis or psychotic breaks,
therefore there will be some terms used that are common in the field of
psychology and spoken commonly among the lay. There is, however, a great chance
that a true definition or understanding of these terms will be lacking and to
spend the time to provide them in this context would be nonconductive to the
point of this article. You are encouraged to engage all of the facts and
opinions presented here with a serious intent to learn truth. It is truth that
liberates and ignorance that enslaves and destroys.
In consulting any psychologist, psychoanalyst or
psychiatrist, you would probably get close to a unanimous supposition as to the
underlying cause of the NFL Tragedy that took place and why it is becoming and
all too common story in the professional sports world. To a man/woman, there
would probably be a distant prognosis of a psychotic break of some kind. Please
note that very little is known about what actually happened, but there are
speculations and some of these speculations or educated in that they are coming
from people that knew those directly involved.
Without knowing much
at all about the happenings of the moments that led up to the shooting, a
season psychoanalyst or a forensic psychologist would make an initial inference
that some sort of psychotic break took place. Now, at this juncture, a great
deal of speculation can be interjected as to what type of psychosis took place.
After interviewing friends, family members, teammates, etc. More can be learned
about Jovan’s behavior over a specific period of time, and from that a more
educated postulation or hypothesis concerning the motive or cause of his
actions that day can be developed.
What is a psychotic break? A psychotic break is a detachment
from reality when a person experiences acute primary psychosis. This break can
be driven by hallucinations or delusions, which are sense driven. This means
that sensory preceptors are sending false readings; what is being smelled, tasted,
seen, heard, or felt is not real. Delusions originate from the malfunctioning
of the person’s perceptive mechanisms within their psyche. Delusions occur when
a person perceives something that is not actually happening to be a real and
true occurrence.
Psychosis is defined as a symptom of mental illness that is
characterized by radical changes in impaired functioning, distorted or
nonexistent sense of reality and general personality.
These breaks can be brought on by a number of things, from
stress, drug use, a traumatic experience, and a number of other variables. The
simple thing in this is that there is a moment in which the person slips from
the ledge of reality and depending on the severity of the slip, can end up completely
detached from reality.
Trends are not created by coincidence or happenstance.
Trends development because of the common mergence of particular variables. When
you begin to see consistent reports of NFL or other professional sports
athletes committing violent acts, this is something to take seriously. There
are those that are so indoctrinated with cultural and environmental paradigms
that their life has been one poor decision after another. This is another
concern, but not the one in question. The concern that the NFL front office
definitely will have to address in the coming weeks is how to deal with
situations in which athletes’ vulnerability to a psychotic episode is
exacerbated by the inherent and volatile pressures and expectations of the
league.
The NFL will have to ask itself some really difficult
questions, separate from the ones being asked by the media and the general
public. Is the NFL truly willing to look at the mental health side of this
equation? Are they willing to invest the resources into the preventative side
of this enigma?
They will dispatch a team of professional grief counselors
to help all those involved cope with the lost, but what about engaging the
issue on the front end. What needs to be done is to develop mental illness
awareness programs. Men, especially, must be encouraged to share their feelings
and admit when they are feeling vulnerable, exposed or week. Culturally men are
taught to suck it up and show no weaknesses. The reality of this is that life does
not bow down to posturing. Every person at some point will meet opposition in
their life that is so huge it intimidates them. They will have that moment when
they will need help, it could very easily be professional help they find
themselves in the need of.
It is easy to sit at a distance and shake your head at some
of the things that are written about what professional athletes do. How much of
this wayward behavior is a symptom of a much larger and dangerous issue?
Something has to be done. We have a number of players in the league that are displaying
psychotic behavior that is being attributed to waywardness, poor backgrounds,
recalcitrance and the like. The truth is these are individuals that are very
confused and could very well be experiencing ongoing psychosis. Whether
depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, and a
number of other psychotic disorders, this is a real issue. The pressures of
being a professional athlete is underestimated drastically by the general
public. In the NFL the average career is extremely short in comparison with
other sports and definitely with conventional careers. This adds a new
stressful component to the dynamic of life management for these young adults.
Whether you accept the numbers of the NFL’s front office
(6.0 years average) or the ones from several other organizations, including the
NFL Players Association (closer to 3.3 years average), the career of an NFL
player is not promised and that alone creates an inherent stress factor.
Imagine a situation in which you showed up to the office every day and there
were two people waiting in the wings for you to screw up so that they could
take your job. You had to eat travel and actually help these people get better
as part of the team concept (Now consider that there are only 31 more companies
that even have a need for what you do, but all of them have an abundance of
people like you waiting in the balance). Imagine finding that you are now
feeling more alone than when you didn’t have the big house and expensive car.
Imagine feeling that everyone has an ulterior motive for being around you.
You have believed all your life that if you could just get
to this point in your life all of the feelings of inadequacies and unworthiness
would be eliminated, only to find that your new found fame and wealth has only
exposed more holes in your armor. This is the life of an NFL Player. Keep in
mind that being a millionaire does not lesson the fact that these are
relatively young individuals with little experience and often poor support
systems.
These players go out every week as modern day gladiators for
the entertainment of the masses. Yes they are paid hefty salaries, but
reasonable in respect to the revenue generated through their talent. More
importantly, there has to be an understanding that they deserve more than a
paycheck. They deserve a nation that is concerned for their personal
well-being.
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| Dr. Rick Wallace |
Again, this article does not look to exonerate Javon Belcherof any
wrong doing, but to shed light on the pain that drove him to the edge of
darkness and to inpsire others to find a solution to insure that this does not
become the epidemic it is threatening to become.
How many more 911 calls will have to ring out before someone
recognizes that there is a larger problem than just another kid turned bad.
While the family of these two young people try to make sense of the madness
while enduring the mourning process, what will the rest of us be doing to
insure that these lives were not lost in vein? That is the question!
~ Dr. Rick Wallace Ph.D.
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