Death of Denver Broncos wide receiver possibly a suicide (23 years old)

[underpants]

Source: CNN

CNN) -- Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels will speak to the media Tuesday about the death of wide receiver Kenny McKinley.

McKinley was found dead Monday afternoon in a Colorado home. Authorities said it appeared the young wide receiver died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.


He played in eight games with the Broncos as a rookie, but was placed on injured reserve before the start of the 2010 season after suffering a knee injury, according to the team.

McKinley is at least the third Bronco to have died since 2007. Cornerback Darrent Williams, 24, was fatally shot near downtown Denver, Colorado, on January 1, 2007. Running back Damien Nash, 24, died after collapsing at a charity basketball game later that winter.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/09/21/nfl.player.death/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

[napi21]

1. What can get a young guy with everything on the winning side

for him to get so depressed that he'd commit suicide? I heard about this earlier this evening & I;ve been thinking about him ever since. Such a sad story. Wouldn't his teem mates or friends have seen something very serious was wrong? Millions of young men DREAM of becoming a pro in the NFL & he;s one of the few that made it. What could have made him feel so terrible?

[jobycom]

2. Depression and mental illness have little to do with what a person has to live for.

Post-partum depression, for instance, affects women at the point in their lives when other women are feeling the most joy.

People suffer depression for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it is because of the strain of events on their lives, sometimes it is something gone haywire in their brain. Sometimes you never have a clue. People suffering depression, especially people planning to kill themselves. Often once the decision is made, they become happy, relieved that it will be over, and they also become careful to hide their plans so no one can stop them. Others hide their depression all along, because they've been trained not to show emotion--especially in a sports environment, where men especially are told to buck up, to not show weakness. There's no crying in baseball. All of that can be good for character building and toughening people to play in an emotional sport, but it can also be tragic when it keeps a person from communicating serious issues, from serious injuries to full depression.

This kid was under the most pressure he's ever been under, even if other things were normal in his life. He was playing in one of the most competitive industries in the world. He was injured and unsure of a comeback. The pressure alone could be too much for most people, but then there is the fear of the loss of his dreams on top of that. And maybe some type of medication for pain that could also get him out of whack. Add to that any personal issues he may have been going through--that most people suffer from time to time--and the strain could have created or added to a clinical depression without anyone seeing it.

And we don't know yet whether people saw it or not. The story hasn't even been told yet.

I don't know if all or any of that applies in this case, but just in general that's why suicide is such a stunning tragedy for people around it.

I'm with you, this story has been bothering me since I read it. They weren't saying suicide at first, but Steve Spurier made a cryptic comment in one of the interviews I read that made me think that's what happened, so it's been on my mind. So sad. For him, for his family, for his co-workers--Denver has had to deal with sudden deaths three times in the last few years. It's a hard story.

[Jennicut]

7. As someone who has suffered from depression since a teenager, I would say you are so correct.

For me, there was no big "reason" except that any normal stress would drive me to want to be perfect and when I couldn't live up to those standards I would get very depressed. The depression led to suicidal thoughts and to taking meds for it since I was in college in the mid 1990's. I have been told many times that I simply lack enough seratonin in my brain. So sadly simple.

I would think being in football where the men are expected not to be weak would be incredibly hard for someone who has depression or mental health issues in general. There is a lot of stigma still attached to mental illness, even today.

[xultar]

9. +1

[HereSince1628]

11. Maybe some medication for depression influenced him

some of them are known to increase suicidal thoughts and suicidal actions.

There are lots of maybes.

Maybe there will be an investigation that produces answers besides the needed exoneration of the Broncos.

[rocktivity]

13. Finally, something that makes sense.

Posted by Jobycom:
...He was playing in one of the most competitive industries in the world. He was injured and unsure of a comeback...And maybe some type of medication for pain that could also get him out of whack...

I've been puzzling about it, too. I couldn't quite see him getting suicidally depressed over a knee injury, especially given his age. But being depressed over the injury plus too many painkillers is what could have created his "perfect storm."

:(
rocktivity

[Ken Burch]

3. The same things that can drive a person with nothing to that choice

The belief that life is no longer worth living is often not connected with any external reality at all:

I've always thought this poem was a great illustration of that.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.

(Edwin Arlington Robinson)

[Iterate]

5. A weak attempt to answer your questions

I say a weak attempt because suicide is so poorly understood that it's difficult to find anything that is truly definitive.

This much we can say: it kills 35,000 Americans a year, one million worldwide, and is a leading cause of death among young adults.

We have trouble understanding it because we look at the behavior of the afflicted person and attempt to derive a cause from what we can see, when the real culprit resides at the neurological, cellular, and molecular level. The disease at that level can cause observable symptoms and most suicides are associated with diagnosed mental illnesses, but contrary to popular wisdom, the uni-polar depression you might be thinking of and that most people are familiar with is low on the list of illnesses that are coincident with suicide.

It's almost as if we saw a case of tuberculosis, diagnose it as "coughing disease", threw a quart of cough syrup down their throats and were puzzled when they died.

I just had the thought that the current state of research is so poor that I've never heard anyone even speculate as to how many cellular/molecular causes there might be -is it actually one cause or are there seven? No one knows.

I do know that somewhere there is a family and a team who are blaming themselves for not seeing it coming. All I can say is that it's almost always the case that no one ever does, not even the doctors, not even after a failed first attempt. And we wouldn't blame ourselves in the same fashion if the fatal illness was cancer or malaria. His parents will blame themselves anyway, and they will grieve most of all.

[Codeine]

10. Clinical depression isn't based on circumstances.

Sadly, you can't always see it, and it never makes sense.

[pitohui]

17. napi, he was injured and unable to play (see posts below)

he DIDN'T have everything on the winning side, in fact, he was on injured reserve with a knee injury, his dreams once so high may have come crashing down

[proteus_lives]

4. Too much pressure? Steroid crash?

Sad, tomorrow might've been a brighter day.

[sendero]

6. I believe most people who commit suicide..

.... are in so much pain that they cannot bear to live any longer.

Pain of this sort is not tempered by any objective measure. If a young football player was depressed, is he going to talk about it, receive treatment? Probably not, he's going to deal with it as best he can.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. had to listen to Tebow preach to him?

poor bastard, RIP

[iandhr]

12. So sad

[Dappleganger]

14. He was on IR

Could be that some medication or combination of medications was the underlying cause of his depression/suicide.

[pitohui]

16. knee injury, he may have feared he would never play again

i have no knowledge abt the young man's background but in this economy a lot of young men think their only hope for a successful life is sports

if they can't achieve in sport, they may think, what have i got to live for?

truly sad

[jkappy]

19. being on IR (full season) may be enough to depress

so young a player (he was also injured in his first year--this being his second) I know that the image this creates among fans and press is not exactly confidence bolstering--"injury prone" "brittle" a wasted draft pick" and most of all "soft" These are especially projected onto young players who hardly get a chance to contribute.

[RobinA]

15. Keep Up Folks!

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Very interesting.

[librechik]

18. oof--brain injury from playing football?

:shrug:

[rocktivity]

21. Too many hits plus depression about the injury plus painkillers...

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a degenerative disease that effects the brain and believed to be caused by repeated head trauma resulting in large accumulations of tau proteins, killing cells in regions responsible for mood, emotions, and executive functioning. The chronic injuries sustained by repeated and untreated concussions has shown to damage the brain over time.

Numerous former professional athletes, particularly former National Football League players, are believed to have had this disease. However the NFL denies the validity of the research...

So I had the right end of the stick with my "perfect storm" theory--hooray for me.

:(
rocktivity

[tuckessee]

20. What a shame! This is the third Bronco to die in recent years.

Cutler & Shanahan were lucky to get out of there.