Ryan Freel commits suicide

[Larry Schuler]

Brain damage?

[Wonderful Monds]

Well, nobody's ever overcome any of those things by changing their outlook or values or attitude. Not true with depression. People do overcome depression that way.

Yeah dude. Depression totally comes from just having a bad attitude.

[dabvu2498]

Ok. We've pushed this discussion right up to the edge of political discussion (and good taste). If we could please rein it in a little and stick to the topicat hand. Thanks.

[kpresidente]

Yeah dude. Depression totally comes from just having a bad attitude.

Absolutely it can. There's a wealth of evidence that says the values you hold have a huge impact on your state of mind. Resentment/anger/self-pity can all plunge you into depression if you hold onto it enough.

[kpresidente]

Brain damage?

How much "brain damage" did Ryan Freel have? He wasn't healthy but he wasn't completely out of his mind either. He was functioning. Why so quick to absolve any role he had in his behavior? And I'm not being hyperbolic, there. That's exactly what a lot of people are doing here.

[Larry Schuler]

Your ideas and theories about depression might be true to you and the CTE info might not pass your internal visualization test but many others disagree. If you want to convince those folks to see it as you do, I think you will need more than your ideas about common sense. Otherwise, many people will disagree and point out why and it just becomes a pile on.

[Dom Heffner]

There's a big difference here in that most lung cancer cases (~90%) are cigarette related, so when you lung cancer, it's a fair assumption that smoking caused it.

Not the case with CTE and suicide. Most suicides aren't CTE related. There's a whole lot of other things you can point to.

Anyway, the guy in your link has a point, too. The chance of a smoker developing lung cancer is pretty low (~15% from my research...he says 8%...he's probably right). Until I looked into it some years ago, my impression was that half or more of smokers got lung cancer. I wonder what kind of sensationalism might lead me to that...

"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack" - Obama's Surgeon General

OMG!!! ONE CIGARETTE CAN KILL YOU!!!!

See also...We have to ban e-cigarettes because the have the word cigarette in their name and that scares me even though they're harmless!!!

Yeah...none of these health scares get overblown. Never.

No difference for me.

[vaticanplum]

I don't understand why society has to have an explaination for everything. Sometimes good people do stuff they normally wouldn't. No one will ever truely know why Ryan Freel killed himself, just that it is a truely sad experience for his whole family, friends, and fans.

Well, it's natural to want to know answers, especially when it pertains to something as life-changing as a loved one dying. But I agree with you in principle that some things will never be known and humans need to accept that.

I think the larger point of a discussion like this one is not necessarily to pinpoint the hows and whys of Ryan Freel's descent and death in particular, but to get a sense of all potential contributing factors in hopes of perhaps preventing them from occurring with others, if at all possible. CTE is becoming more and more of an issue in sports as more and more is known about it, and if it played a role *at all* in Freel's life and death -- really not only his death, but his quality of life beforehand -- then it's best to explore it as much as we can. I don't agree with the mindset that athletes get paid whatever and accept the consequences of whatever when they step on a field, especially if that's in light of sports organizations deliberately turning a blind eye to the harm athletes might be exposing themselves to. Competition is stiff, pressures are high, and athletes are taught from a young age to be tough, take their hard knocks, and keep quiet about it. So I do feel that professional sports have an ethical and financial obligation (because they are making money off this kind of play) to educate themselves as much as possible about this -- including cases where evidence is strong if not definite -- to make honest conclusions and decisions. I actually think baseball has done a great job with this; the plate collision ruling this week is clearly a byproduct of it. And of course boxing got on the train decades ago, to its own great popular and financial plummet, though it took them a while to get there. Football and hockey have proven more resistant.

[paulrichjr]

Meant to post this here but accidentally put it on the sun deck....

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/15/health...rticle_sidebar

No real surprise except he had his first one at 2 years old...

[NebraskaRed]

Boy, did I hate seeing the title of this thread again.

[Roy Tucker]

I hope his soul is at peace now. A life is too much to give for a sport.