Author Archive: Stephanie Salazar

Reno Gazette Journal: Nevada women’s basketball adds a focus on mental health

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

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?”

Read the rest of the story on rgj.com.

Inquirer: Dawkins thought about ending his life. His wife helped save it.

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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.

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.

Read the rest of the story on Philly.com.

Stateside Radio: Jevon Moore talks mental health with Cyndy Canty

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Jevon Moore, mental health outreach coordinator for Michigan Athletics, joined Cynthia Canty of Stateside Radio to discuss how he and the Athletes Connected program address mental health, the resources provided and strategies used to help student-athletes. Their discussion lasted nearly 12 minutes.

[ Listen Here ]

Student-athletes face unique pressures, both on and off the field.

But research has found athletes are far less likely than other college students to seek help for mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression.

Jevon Moore wants to change that. Moore joined Stateside’s Cynthia Canty to discuss his efforts to shift the culture of college athletics and increase awareness of mental health resources.

During his undergraduate years, Moore played football at North Carolina State. Now, he is pursuing a Master’s in Social Work at the University of Michigan and working with the university’s Athletes Connected program, a collaboration between UM Athletics, the School of Public Health, and the Depression Center.

When a student-athlete arrives on a campus like Michigan’s, Moore says they are immediately introduced to a large circle of individuals looking over them — coaches, trainers, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and nutritionists.

Moore said this can be overwhelming as athletes begin to look around and try to figure out who is in their corner and who they can trust. Many of the people in a student athlete’s life are focused on helping athletes get rid of their weaknesses and increase their strength. So it can be especially confusing to seek help if you are experiencing mental weaknesses.

Read and listen to the rest of the story on Michigan Radio.

The Athletic: Passion, purpose and a love story — Jevon Moore

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Passion, purpose and a love story: How Michigan’s Jevon Moore joined the fight around mental health in college sports is a feature story written for The Athletic Detroit. The main subject is Jevon Moore, an counselor and fellow in the U-M Athletic Department, detailing his life from football player who wondered why athletes struggled to now helping student-athletes on a daily basis. In it, Moore’s life is examined through the relationship with his wife, Stephanie, and how the Moore family landed in Ann Arbor. Below is an excerpt.

By Cody Stavenhagen

Moore liked the fact he was challenged around Stephanie. He liked the idea of personal growth. As a kid, he was always the friend who took notice when someone was acting strangely. He liked to ask people questions, to make them feel comfortable opening up. In college, he always wondered why some players made it and others, sometimes the most talented, ended up back at home after a year.

For a little while, he even went to counseling and learned more about coping mechanisms, thinking more about how he could best manage his own struggles. He had no idea how all this would later apply.

Stephanie was also chasing her own life and career, so that meant a year in London, then a move to Chicago for her master’s. Eventually, Moore decided to follow his passions. He quit his job and moved to Chicago to be with her. He planned to pursue a college coaching job, but that never quite happened. He worked as a bartender, then spent a summer working with a program called Freedom Schools. Around this time, he realized he might be able to make an even bigger impact away from coaching.

“I didn’t want to have to trick people into listening to me because I was your coach,” Moore said. “If I want to really help you and I tell you to do this, but then the next play you do something else, our relationship is affected. I wanted to pull the sport away from it. I wanted to say, ‘OK, I have nothing else to do with this other than your well-being.’”

The big break came when Stephanie applied to a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan.

Thanks largely to his wife’s drive, Moore ended up in Ann Arbor, and he says he snuck his way into a job with the athletic department, working in community outreach. He’d take athletes to work with schools or help with events.

He talked with Greg Harden, Michigan’s renowned athletic counselor best known for performance work with Tom Brady, and the more they talked, Moore realized he could be best suited for a different line of work. Harden got his start in social work before Bo Schembechler hired him as a student-athlete counselor in 1986, a move that was well ahead of its time.

I didn’t want to have to trick people into listening to me because I was your coach. If I want to really help you and I tell you to do this, but then the next play you do something else, our relationship is affected. I wanted to pull the sport away from it. I wanted to say, ‘OK, I have nothing else to do with this other than your well-being.’ — Jevon Moore

Soon, Harden had Moore chasing a master’s degree in social work. Soon, Moore began working as a counselor. Chances are none of that happens if he doesn’t meet Stephanie.

“I could be doing engineering and building and making all this money and what have you,” Moore said. “But the things I would be engineering are used by people, and if people aren’t OK, then it doesn’t make sense to do all that.”

* * *

It’s Monday afternoon in the South Athletic and Performance Center, and representatives for Athletes Connected are meeting to discuss plans for the summer and into the fall.

There are no suits or ties, no people with fancy titles giving detailed, academic dissertations on mental illnesses. Instead, it’s six people in a small conference room with bad lighting, working together to make a difference. A large portion of the June meeting centered on how they should make their magnets – a long slogan or a short one? — to pass out and raise awareness. The same group that is taking part in innovative research is still a small shop.

When Moore speaks in the meeting, he tends to command attention. He’s giving a breakdown of a restorative yoga program Athletes Connected is trying to get off the ground. He uses expressive claps and hand motions, and the energy of the room picks up noticeably. The yoga program has potential, but the logistics remain a challenge.

Zoom out, and the issues Athletes Connected faces remain towering concepts. The group has met with U-M coaches, who are supposedly interested and most often understanding. But implementing effective mental care in an athletic environment isn’t always easy. Too often, performance and mental health are made out to be competing ideas.

“Everyone’s as educated about it as they are scared of it,” Moore said.

One of the leaders of the program is Will Heininger, a former Michigan defensive lineman who has been at the forefront of the group’s media coverage. One of the first videos Athletes Connected produced focused on Heininger and his battle with major depression in college. Now Heininger works in U-M’s Depression Center in addition to being an outreach coordinator for Athletes Connected. He does plenty of public speaking and spends time dreaming up a world where mental care is treated no differently than physical care in college athletic programs.

“It’s still the tip of the iceberg,” Heininger said. “Look at where the strength and conditioning programs are, as opposed to when they had one weight room and one coach.”

Read the rest of the story on The Athletic.

Detroit News: Michigan athletes tackling mental health issues

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The Detroit News profiled Athletes Connected and Will Heininger to discuss how Michigan is dealing with the challenges of student-athlete mental wellness.

By John Niyo

The headlines keep screaming about a crisis, most recently the suicide of a starting quarterback for a major college football program. And the underlying numbers — about the prevalence of mental-health problems in today’s society, and the stigma still attached to it in sports — suggest there’s ample cause for alarm.

But seated in an office inside the University of Michigan’s Comprehensive Depression Center, Will Heininger, a former defensive lineman for the Wolverines — and someone who might’ve been a sad statistic himself had a silent cry for help not been heard several years ago — wants to make a point.

There’s hope, and light, and as the late-morning sun shines through the windows of this transformative building on UM’s east medical campus — home to the first-ever multidisciplinary center dedicated to depression and bipolar illnesses — Heininger is busy delivering a clear-eyed message.

“I think it’s important that people know progress is being made,” said Heininger, now 29 and working as outreach coordinator for the UM Depression Center. “The dramatic headlines are going to grab more attention. Yet for every tragic situation and life lost to suicide, there’s a ton of outreach and prevention work being done that obviously might not make the news.

“You can’t only focus on the negatives. Because it’s not an accurate version of the truth. We are doing great work and there’s really devastating things still happening.”

May is Mental Health Awareness month, and speaking as both a mental-health advocate and as a young man whose own life was nearly destroyed by depression, Heininger doesn’t want this to be overlooked: “I’m really proud of how far we’ve come.”

As he should be. Heininger is a testament to that progress, a former football player openly discussing once-taboo subjects of fear and anxiety and depression. He’s also the poster boy, in many ways, for UM’s Athletes Connected program, a living, breathing example of why this collaborative effort between the School of Public Health, the Depression Center and the athletic department is needed.

Read the rest of the story on The Detroit News.