Researcher hopes study of mental illness in student athletes will reduce stigma, raise awareness - The Dominion Post

It’s bowl season for college football, and Robert Hilliard wants to remind you of something while you’re regarding the slog to that sport’s national championship.

Maybe you peaked in the Pop Warner League.

Maybe you never got past touch-football in the backyard.

No matter, the WVU researcher said.

He wants to remind you that  football players in the rarified air of Division I … aren’t all that different from you.

Yes, really.

Even if they can knock you flat in the backfield and beat you by two or three lengths in the 40-yard dash.

Nine years ago, Hilliard, now a doctoral student in the College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences, was a two-sport man in Michigan.

Hilliard lettered in football and baseball at  tiny Kalamazoo College.

He roamed the defensive backfield for the football Hornets and held down pitching and second base duties in the spring, when Mr. Doubleday’s slower, less chaotic sport took over.

At 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds, he knew he wasn’t going pro, certainly not in football.

He was just out there for the love of the game.

Frequent shoulder-separation injuries knocked him out of football for good after his sophomore year.

But the suicide that season of a teammate knocked him even more.

“There weren’t any warning signs,” Hilliard said.

“He just did it, and he was gone.”

Hilliard didn’t realize it at the time, but the self-inflicted death would  inform his current research in Morgantown.

He would come to realize  those campus stars are just like everyone else, in terms of anxiety, angst and  depression.

Low self-worth, too, amazingly — even with their names cheered and chanted from the stands.

And that’s just the emotional part.

His subjects, he said, can’t help but differ from the rest of us related to their prowess on the field of play and everything that comes with it, no matter the sport.

A lot of them are stars in the main hallway.

They have name recognition.

Freshmen follow them with eyes as they swagger into the cafeteria.

And they have the most valuable social currency of all, especially in high school.

They’re popular.

It’s great. It’s also not great.

The burden,  Hilliard  said, is  they may not want to admit it  if their emotional game is lacking.

Staying hidden —  even under Friday night lights

Call it  the pedestal factor.

Doing well on the field of play can also carry the expectations of doing well in class and in life.

With this crowd, seeking counseling for mental health can be perceived as an act weaker than that  screen pass wobbled by a fourth-string quarterback in a junior varsity scrimmage.

Hilliard wants to change that.

With the help of the NCAA, he’s huddling up to call an audible on that perception.

A research grant award from the organization that oversees college sports enabled him to start his study in October.

“Stigma, Attitudes and Intentions to Seek Mental Health Services in Student-Athletes” is the name of the effort.

To date, he chronicled the emotional fortunes of more than 200 student-athletes at four colleges across the U.S.

He hopes to have 100 more subjects from a variety of sports as the study progresses.

Because of privacy statutes, he can’t name the schools.

He can say the student-athletes who  participated in the study  come from NCAA Division I, II and III programs.

“Basically the full spectrum,” he said.

Taking a knee

Meanwhile, fans and non-followers of college football alike were shocked last January after Tyler Hilinski, a solid, journeyman-type quarterback for the Washington State Cougars killed himself with a rifle he lifted from a teammate.

As it turned out, the 21-year-old was suffering in silence, even as he worked hard to earn a starting position.

The autopsy was even more shocking than the act.

It revealed that Hilinski was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

CTE is  the neurodegenerative disease wrought  by the head trauma of simply playing football.

It’s normally associated with older players who retire from the NFL, then begin failing, cognitively and physically.

Hilliard knows CTE is  a byproduct he can’t power through,  given the violence of the game.

He is heartened, though, that the pros and NCAA are finally teaming to address the issue of mental angst and illness in athletes.

Don’t put me in, Coach

For Hilliard, the research is  just taking the field after kickoff.

A couple of plays were already called.

For example, he knows suicide is already a leading cause of death in the country among people aged 10 to 34.

And that the age of 10, as most sports psychologists also attest, is  when the kids on the youth teams who are really good  begin peeling off from the pack to become stars.

Final, conclusive data won’t be forthcoming for a while, he said.

He hopes, however, his work can begat self-awareness among a population revered for reflexes and physical strength.

Seeking help for feelings of depression, unease or any other dark mood isn’t a sign of weakness, he said.

In fact, in the opposite.

“The more we can openly discuss the topic, then the more that stigma will continue to be washed away.”

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