Harry Miller couldn’t have picked a better venue or better support for the near-miss disaster. It didn’t seem like that a year ago, shortly before the 2021 college football season. The Ohio State Center, who made an appointment with Ryan Day, told his coach he was contemplating suicide.
“He’s been kind of open and honest about where he is [mentally],” Day told CBS Sports. “A big part was whether he wanted to continue playing football or not. At the time, for me, it had nothing to do with football. It all had to do with where he was [mentally].”
Miller is on the brink, a tragic mile marker for many who are suffering from what has become a pervasive mental health crisis in college who expects to say the course is not exclusive to athletes. The combination of rapidly converging issues — COVID-19, politics, inflation, class disparities among others — has brought society to its knees in recent years.
However, in collegiate athletics, the problems, ages, and consequences are different — and perhaps even more damaging. The mental health experts consulted for this story all mentioned that college is a time when the mind, personality, and life are being formed. Throw in the pressure of social media, relationships, even the NIL, and the stakes are raised.
Numbers don’t lie. From 2000-16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 30% increase in suicide deaths. One study, cited by the Harvard School of Public Health, showed one in four people 13-34 years old made a suicide attempt after considering it for less than 5 minutes.
“It’s bad now, and will get worse,” said Dr. John Rosa, a behavioral medicine expert who has served as a White House consultant on the opioid crisis in the last three presidential administrations. “Even if we shine a light on it and pay attention to it and understand it, it will still get worse.”
We enter the 153rd season of college football with a hidden foe eating away at the fabric of college sports. Mental health crisis, for sure. Some even say the suicide crisis among college athletes. At least four college athletes – all women – have died by suicide in the first five months of 2022.
Miller’s struggles stand as one of the most significant stories of the off-season. In March, he announced his medical retirement from football in an emotional and detailed tweet. The former high school valedictorian from Georgia referred to the scars on his wrist and throat. Eleven days later, the nation witnessed the story on NBC’s “Today.”
“People call me brave,” Miller said that day, “but to me, it’s like not dying.”
Miller remained on a scholarship at Ohio State while he pursued an engineering degree. The day Miller turned to his coach for advice, the help he received was immediate and significant. Ohio State has five full-time and two part-time sports psychologists who join forces to work with athletes and staff across 36 sports. If that sounds ambitious, it is. Depending on funding, some schools are lucky to have one psychology professional.
Ohio State has lost soccer player Costa Karageorge, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2014.
OSU athletics director Gene Smith said the realization that more help was needed hit him in the last decade.
“That [realized] when we started,” said Smith.
Miller certainly benefited that Day immediately directed his center to significant mental health resources at Ohio State. Day’s father died by suicide when he was 8 years old. Last year, during a series of interviews, Day discussed his eventual revival after the tragedy.
The understanding of his father’s death didn’t hit him until he was 11 years old. As a young man, Day would get angry when his teammates ran into their father after a game. During a May 2018 hiring visit, Day walked the halls with a Massillon, Ohio, high school official. He asks why is the hall so empty. Day was told that the students were absent because the campus was working on its seventh suicide case of the school year.
“Looking back over the last 30 years, I think mental health issues saw us, but we didn’t.”
Some studies show suicide deaths have been on the rise for a while. In a May study, the NCAA stated rates of mental fatigue, depression and anxiety among college athletes continue to be 1.5-2 times higher than before the pandemic.
“I think it’s always changing,” Day said. “The way players were built 20 years ago is different from 10 years ago, different from 5 years ago, and will be different 5 and 10 years from now.”
We are already at a time where the on-field aspect of college football is almost a distraction. This is an era full of stress about player empowerment, NCAA deregulation, transfer portals and realignment all while the sport is generally moving towards a professional model.
The college mental health crisis has taken a darker turn with the recent deaths by suicide.
Before half a year had passed, four female college athletes had died by suicide, making the subject of headlines in a compact timeline: Sarah Shulze (21, Wisconsin cross-country), Lauren Bernett (20, James Madison softball), Arlana Miller (19 , Southern cheerleader) and Katie Meyer (22, Stanford football).
“The pursuit of perfection can be a dangerous thing,” says Jamey Houle, principal exercise psychologist at Ohio State.
Houle saw a sports psychologist as a high school sophomore after great success in gymnastics, including national championships. After competing for Ohio State, Houle earned a doctorate in a discipline that helped him at a young age. Since 2019, he has led the sports psychology department for what is regularly the richest athletics department in the nation.
“[The crisis] really explains what has been around, in one sense, for hundreds of years,” Houle said. “Because there is so much light on athletes now more than ever, the level of exposure has never been seen like this. One person [on social media] could make 15 people make horrible comments about them in 30 seconds. Back then, they had to send a letter.”
Smith played on a day when mail wasn’t electronic. As a black soccer player in his first year at Notre Dame in the mid-1970s, he had problems. He just didn’t know how to describe them.
“Six student-athletes were kicked out of Notre Dame. Two of them were my roommates,” Smith recalled. “They were suspended for one year. I myself was a student-athlete for one year. All the depression I had, I overcame. I don’t know because I don’t know. I just deal with it. “
Former Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski died by suicide in 2018. He was described by teammates and coaches as a friendly leader. One day, he was not there, after taking his life. His parents had become national fighters for suicide awareness, forming the Hilinski Hope Foundation.
“It’s a struggle without him,” said Kym Hilinski. “I cry every day. I will do that no matter what. I prefer to help people through my pain.”
Kim and her husband, Mark, have channeled their grief with incredible grace and outreach. They will visit 17 states in the next three months to give a series of “Tyler Talks” on campus. Inevitably, in every conversation, at least one athlete will come up to Mark and say, “You saved my life,” he shares.
“We’re trying to get this to student-athletes; it’s a complex issue,” adds Mark. “Somehow, because that’s your mind, kids have the feeling that everything to do with depression, anxiety, bipolar is based on how you were raised. We want them to understand it can be linked to brain chemistry. Nobody’s asking to get [illness].” .”
Aaron Taylor, College Football Hall of Famer from Notre Dame and CBS Sports college football analyst, has been tackling mental issues since the age of 9. She stands as an outspoken advocate of #SameHere, a global mental health movement.
“There’s a tsunami of mental health crises to come post-COVID, post-Ukrainian-Russian war, that’s coming post-election not going the way we wanted,” Taylor said. “The last three years have been the greatest period of uncertainty that our generation around the world has seen. We look at fish that fall on the beach and wonder what happened.”
Reuben Faloughi was a defensive midfielder in Georgia from 2009-12, but his goal has always been to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology (Missouri, 2019). While at Mizzou, Faloughi was involved in a boycott of football players against racism. This year, he left South Florida as a staff psychologist to start his own practice in the Tampa, Florida area.
His experience gave him the unique experience of feeling an athlete’s signature anxiety and being on the front lines against it.
“Mental health is in a very different place today than it was when I was in college,” says Faloughi. “I told some of the athletes I worked with, ‘I didn’t know what a counseling center was when I was in college.'”
Faloughi noted that he and his black teammates were reluctant to meet college counselors who did not look like them (white and female). These are the little things that the public doesn’t see.
“I remember feeling tension, but tension for some people in football is a means for those around me to be providers for themselves and their families,” he explained. “That makes it turn out to be more of a transactional experience. It’s very different from high school where there’s more fun in it. It’s not stated explicitly, but implicitly along the way you learn that you are an income generator for the university.”
In 2015, a landmark Pac-12 study may have revealed an impending mental health crisis. The study concluded that the average athlete spends 50 hours per week on their sport. The NCAA’s weekly limit for sports activities is 20 hours. The study showed that those rules were violated which led to an “emotional toll”.
The NCAA has finally adopted a law preventing any practice from starting after midnight and before 6 a.m. The changes suggest some practices are actually carried out in the middle of the night.
The NCAA also updated its mental health best practices in 2020. But as is common with the NCAA, it usually can’t mandate changes because mandates only work if there are penalties for violating them.
Taylor commended NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline for paying attention to the matter.
“In my opinion, that’s the best part of what the NCAA does,” Taylor said. “The unlucky factor is through the roof.”
Top Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren has made mental health a priority. Warren languished as a child, bedridden for months after being hit by a car. In his previous professional life, Warren was in player development for St. Louis Rams.
“Too many suicides are happening on our campus,” Warren said. “That damn social media. People live on it. You can’t even eat with someone because they’re looking at their phone.”
Day credits Miller for having the strength to walk into his office that day last year. At the time, Day said he was only aware Miller would be “a little anxious” about picking up the ball.
“There’s nothing to make us believe that there’s a lot going on,” Day said. “There’s a lot of pressure that comes with playing games. It’s hard to say when it gets to that point.”
If all this increased stress sounds like the slow breakdown of society, Rosa admits that’s the case.
“This is not what we genetically and evolutionarily put us on this planet,” said Rosa, who runs 17 clinics in the Maryland and Virginia area. “Exponential change isn’t OK. From the Ice Age there have been changes over the millennia to where we are. “All those things go on forever. … Suddenly, in the last 50 years, the dynamics have changed so fast that we don’t have the ability to adapt to those rapid changes.”
Oregon basketball star Sedona Prince recently decided to take a break from posting on TikTok. Prince’s March 2021 video showing the inequality between the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournament weight room went viral. She is now a minor celebrity.
“My mental health has been declining for a long time,” he said in a post, “to the point where I’m really at my lowest point right now.”
Veteran Arizona Army associate for medical services Randy Cohen summed up this crisis briefly.
“Looking back over the last 30 years, I think mental health issues saw us, but we didn’t,” he said.
The story begins with the courage it took Harry Miller to break into Ryan Day’s office.
“For me, it speaks of courage,” Houle said. “On the other hand, it also speaks to Ryan Day’s openness to being able to have those conversations. I do that for a living, and it’s still scary to hear.”
The whole story, unfortunately, has no ending. At least not yet. For people like Miller, his new life and journey continues day by day.
“If we’re going to recruit people and say we’re going to be there [to] help them grow and be part of the family … then we have to do that,” Day said.
“It can’t just be on the football field.”
