We share an excerpt from an ESPN.com story about a writer, Ivan Maisel, and the family of Tyler Hilinski, Washington State’s quarterback who died by suicide in January 2018. The Maisel and Hilinski families both experienced the heartbreak of losing a family member to suicide.

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By Ivan Maisel

I came of age in the wake of Woodward and Bernstein, when young journalists were taught to be as neutral as the painted highway stripe. After nearly four decades as a sportswriter, I have learned to negotiate a middle ground between my training and my life experience. Some stories demand more of the latter.

I understood that the moment I read last January that Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski ended his life. He was a college junior, 21 years old, the second of three children, hundreds of miles away from home.

Almost three years earlier, my son Max ended his life. He was a college junior, the second of three children, 21 years old, hundreds of miles away from home.

Like a winemaker trying to create a structured red, how much of the skin you leave in the juice changes the color and character of the final product. I’ve got a lot of skin in this one.

There’s often an immediate intimacy among parents whose children have ended their lives. We get it. The loss of a child is an awful subject, so awful that it makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say. One of the many secrets of The Club No One Wants to Join is that we love to talk about the children we’ve lost. Talking about them keeps them present.

But people hesitate, sometimes under the guise of protecting the feelings of the bereaved. I would say, always with a smile to smooth the delivery of the sarcasm, “You know, if you hadn’t brought Max up, I wouldn’t have been thinking of him.”

When you live with the awful every moment of every day, the awful becomes everyday. It is no longer so daunting. When someone told me I was living “a parent’s worst nightmare,” I responded, “No, you wake up from nightmares.”

The first time I called Mark Hilinski, Tyler’s father, we spoke for 1 hour, 10 minutes. “I had never talked to anybody — in my spot,” Mark said later, with a mirthless laugh. “Got emails, got letters, got cards, read a ton. … But that was the first time I had talked to anybody that kinda sat over here, and I appreciated it.”

Mark’s wife, Kym, Tyler’s mother, sounded a note of grace. “I’m actually happy that [people] can’t understand,” she said, “because I would never, ever want anyone to really understand what you and I are going through.”

Mark is a bear of a man, personable in the way that most successful salesmen are personable. He is a traditional American Dad. He responds to problems in the stereotypically American Dad way: looking to fix them. Except that this problem, the biggest that he and Kym have ever faced, can’t be fixed.

He hates that he can’t fix the problem, and he hates that he feels self-pity because he can’t fix the problem, and once you go down that rabbit hole it can be a long time before you see sunlight again.

He understands that he is not the first father to lose a son. He understands we live in a world where bad things happen. He and Kym recently attended a memorial for a 20-year-old struck by lightning.

“If you can muster it, that’ll put some perspective on you quick,” Mark said, “but it doesn’t lessen the sadness for me.”

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Read the rest of the story on ESPN.com.

Below is an excerpt from a Reno Gazette Journal story about the Nevada women’s hoops team improving its mental health and wellness.

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By Chris Murray

he Nevada women’s basketball team is working to improve its on-court skill, its conditioning and its chemistry this offseason just like every other school, but it has added one additional summer goal: improving its mental health and wellness, which is becoming an increasingly open topic in the world of high-level athletics.

When head coach Amanda Levens, who is entering her second season leading the Wolf Pack, was at last year’s Final Four, one of the guest speakers there was ESPN’s Kate Fagan, who authored “What Made Maddy Run,” the story of Madison Holleran, an All-American runner who committed suicide during her freshman season at Penn in 2014. After that session, Levens was inspired to make mental health a priority for her program.

“Our name for it is ‘Protect our Pack,” Levens said. “Every week we’ve had one session. We’ve done healthy relationships, drug and alcohol education, distress management, emotional regulation, peak performance with a sports psychologist.”

Nevada added six freshmen this offseason and research shows rates for teen depression and suicide have skyrocketing since 2011. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-24, with more than 4,500 per year in that age group, although the rate is significantly lower for NCAA athletes than the general population.

Levens didn’t have any specific reason for concern about her players, but the lesson from “What Made Maddy Run” is it’s difficult to know if somebody is struggling with mental health issues.

“She basically dealt with depression and masked it through social media,” Levens said. “Anybody who looked back at her social media would say, ‘This was a happy kid. She was doing well. She was a straight ‘A’ student at Penn. She had all of these things going for her, so why would she commit suicide? How did we miss how bad it really was for her?’ It talks a lot about not taking stuff at face value, at social media value and understanding where they’re at and how do you find out where they’re at and dig deeper?”

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Read the rest of the story on rgj.com.

Ahead of his induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Brian Dawkins opened up about his battle with depression, thoughts of suicide, and how his family, namely wife Connie Dawkins, saved his life.

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By Paul Domowitch

Brian Dawkins doesn’t know where he would be today without his wife. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. He does know.

He’d be dead.

He’d be in a bronze box in a cemetery somewhere instead of standing next to a bronze bust of himself Saturday night in Tom Benson Stadium in Canton, Ohio, making his acceptance speech for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Were it not for Connie Dawkins, there never would have been nine Pro Bowl invitations.

Were it not for her, there never would have been five first-team all-pro selections and he never would have been the straw that stirred the drink for all of those great Jim Johnson defenses.

“That’s the love of my life, man. To be the man I am today, a lot of that has to do with her and the things she wasn’t going to tolerate. I had to change parts of who I was in order to be with her.” — Brian Dawkins on his wife, Connie

And he never would have become the only defensive player in NFL history to record 25 or more interceptions, sacks, and forced fumbles.

“There was a lot of pressure on him after he was drafted by the Eagles,” Connie Dawkins said in a recent interview. “Going to a new city. Wanting to be the best. The expectations the team had for him. The pressures of a new family — little Brian had just been born back then. I was sick with an infection.

“The pressures of suddenly having all of this money. The outside intervention with other family members. There just was a lot on him.

“He was still growing into a man at the time. Brian always was quiet and introverted. But when you have everybody pulling on you and you don’t say anything back, they’re going to keep on and keep on — me included — until you blow up.”

The weight of that pressure took a toll on Dawkins. A very heavy, nearly fatal one.

He struggled with depression. He had debilitating migraines. He was drinking too much. The thermostat on his temper had stopped working.

Connie still remembers the day her husband got so angry that he ran full-speed into a door, ramming it with his head.

“I was very scared for him because I had never seen that side of him,’’ Connie said. “That’s when I said, ‘OK, we need to do something.’”

“That’s when I called Emmitt [Thomas, the Eagles’ defensive coordinator] and said, ‘You need to come get him. You need to talk to him. We have to do something.’ Because I knew he was just pushed to the limit and didn’t know what to do.”

Dawkins said he came “very, very, very, very” close to ending his life back then. “I remember thinking of different ways to do it,” he said. “I thought about ways to do it where Connie and the kids could still get the money” from the Eagles and his life insurance policy.

“That was real stuff in my life at that time,” he said.

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Read the rest of the story on Philly.com.

Kent City boys’ basketball coachDave Ingles was featured about his struggles with depression and how he’s helping himself by helping others. Below is an excerpt.

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By Mark Opfermann

Dave Ingles is starting to tell his story.

Not the one as coach of the Kent City High School boys basketball team that captured the hearts of the small town in West Michigan this winter with the first 20-0 regular season in school history. Not the guy with the bubbly personality and even brighter wardrobe choices.

Not that one.

That would be too easy.

No, Ingles is telling his personal story.

“Behind the scenes, it’s been a war basically every day to get to the next day.”

The hard one.

The one he hid for years from everyone, even his wife.

The one caused by depression that left him in a dark place, even suicidal at times.

It’s something he still battles today, and he says, most likely tomorrow.

In a way, he says it’s therapeutic to talk about his struggles that surface most often when he is alone.

The basketball season turned out to be a godsend. So are his family and friends, former players, the school, the basketball community, for the outpouring of support since his secret came to light.

He is undergoing counseling and getting help.

And now he wants to share his story to help others.

“You never know what someone is going through. It can look fantastic, but yet, behind the scenes, it might not be that way,” he said during a recent 45-minute interview that included tears and laughter. “We kind of look at what’s going on, you’re 20-0, we’ve gone to the Breslin Center, all these good things have happened as a coach, but in the meantime, we haven’t enjoyed it at all.

“Behind the scenes, it’s been a war basically every day to get to the next day.”

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Read the rest of the story on MLive.com.

Former Iowa cornerback and Detroit Lions safety Amari Spievey was profiled by Hawkeye Nation. Spievey (pronounced “spuh-VAY”) recounts the hard road he encountered while playing professional football, the ensuing depression brought on by repeated concussions and personal tragedy. Below is an excerpt.

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By Rob Howe

[Amari] Spievey was languishing with his depression. It caused unrest in his relationship with [his girlfriend Lisa Marie] Santos and in most aspects of his life. He sat around his house, captive to his thoughts, many of which carried him back to [Chauncey] Hardy’s death.

“Every time I thought about it, it was almost like peeling a scab off,” he said.

Nothing else occupied his time. The cycle was vicious.

“I wasn’t working. I wasn’t doing anything. That destroyed me because all you have are your thoughts. It keeps you in a bad place. The worst thing to do when you’re depressed is just stay home because it’s going to keep you in a prison in your mind and drive you crazy,” he said.

He finally pulled himself out of the rut. He started playing recreational basketball and attending social gatherings. He credited faith, family and friends for helping him. His 7-year-old daughter, Alaia Spievey, stood at the forefront of that.

“It took a while to laugh, to smile. She was born a year before (Hardy) died. She gave me a reason to live, to smile, to look forward to the next day,” he said.

Depression isn’t cured, it’s controlled. You manage. Some days are better than others. Spievey finally is enjoying more good than bad. That’s a victory.

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Read the rest of the story on HawkeyeNation.com.