This disease is destroying NFL players' mental health

Brut America

"I can't remember how to tie a tie, I can't remember how to lace my shoes ..."  More and more football players are being diagnosed with CTE, a devastating neurodegenerative disease. But for decades, the NFL ignored it … Christopher Nowinski

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00:00If it's a mental health issue for Antonio Brown, so be it.

00:24I actually feel for this guy in terms of his mental well-being.

00:29Everybody should hopefully do what they can to help him in ways that he really needs it.

00:35I'm not surprised that people are talking about mental health and CTE in the wake of

00:40Antonio Brown's behavior.

00:42CTE is a neurodegenerative brain disease that's caused by repetitive traumatic injuries to

00:48the brain.

00:49It's logical to assume that about at least one in ten NFL players on the field right

00:53now have CTE.

00:59It could be depression, it could be anxiety, or an ability to control their behaviors,

01:11their impulses, aggression, sometimes violence.

01:14CTE is very often seen in people who have taken thousands and thousands of blows to

01:19the head.

01:20And Antonio Brown is one of the top 25 receivers in NFL history.

01:24He's been tackled nearly a thousand times just during games, let alone practice, college,

01:28high school, youth.

01:30So he has taken extraordinary head trauma.

01:36I can't remember how to tie a tie.

01:39I can't remember how to lace my shoes.

01:42My left arm won't do what my brain tells it to do.

01:56When Andre Waters died in 2006, who was a strong safety for the Philadelphia Eagles

02:00and the guy I grew up watching, he took his life at age 45 and it turned out he had CTE.

02:07Football has driven this partially because there's a huge problem, but also football

02:12was targeted at the beginning because the NFL was actively denying that there was this

02:17thing called CTE and it was related to football.

02:36He had very advanced disease.

02:39This would be the first case we've ever seen of that kind of damage in such a young individual.

02:48If I had a son myself, I suppose I could make him not play, but I would really, really strongly

02:55discourage him from playing.

03:09The concept of permanent brain damage and dementia following repeated blows to the head

03:15is a very well-established and generally accepted principle in medicine.

03:20Would you agree with that statement?

03:22There's a lot more you have to say about yes, I agree, or no, I don't agree.

03:34In 2003, a concussion ended my career and I kept performing with the concussion and

03:41made it so bad that I've never recovered.

03:44And then as I went down the concussion path, I started learning about CTE and realized

03:49CTE was this related but separate horrible disease that we need to get our arms around

03:56because it was killing people.

03:58CTE became widely known in 1928 from a famous paper called Punch Drunk by Harrison Martland,

04:21where he noted that boxers were coming into his clinic showing this same constellation

04:27of memory problems, inappropriate behaviors, Parkinson's-like movements and tremors.

04:33Repeated sharp blows may well result in serious mental or physical injury or even, as is too

04:41often the case, death.

04:43But then we stopped and we didn't think about all the other sports and activities that can

04:47cause CTE.

04:57When you talk about will fewer players develop CTE, you have to realize that they're not

05:09just developing CTE in the NFL, they're developing it in college and in high school and even

05:14younger.

05:15No child should be playing tackle football before age 14 and frankly, no child in any

05:19sport should be exposed to repetitive hits to the head.

05:22We actually have to change what we're doing with children when their brain is developing

05:26and that's not what's happening.

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