Killer’s suicide a grim part of prison world
`Social defeat’ may have fueled choice
Suicide seemed unlikely for former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, just days after his courtroom victory.
But with the trial behind him, the disgraced ex-NFL star may have shifted his focus back to the bleak reality: his permanent move from penthouse life to prison life.
“You can imagine he had a reasonable view of what he had left in the world, and what he left behind,” said Dr. Gary Sachs, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Once that verdict was read, what’s left but to keep watching people get things you can’t have?”
The once-coveted football player was found hanging in his jail cell early yesterday, five days after he received a not guilty verdict for a 2012 double murder. But Hernandez still faced a life sentence without chance of parole for the 2013 murder of Odin L. Lloyd.
Hernandez may have felt alone in his cell, but he was not alone in his hopelessness. Massachusetts saw an annual suicide rate of 32 for every 100,000 prisoners from 2001 to 2014 — the fourthhighest in the country. Though experts can only speculate on the complex psychological processes that possibly drove Hernandez to take his own life, the concept of social defeat is well known in mental health literature.
Rats have been found to show signs of depression when they witness other rats receive food rewards without getting one themselves.
For Hernandez, he had become accustomed to a life full of rewards — fame, attention, and praise. That all disappeared in a blink.
“Boy, he fell far, and he fell fast,” Sachs said. “It’s a very sad story.”
The erstwhile athlete’s tale is a complicated one. Before he became a football hero, he was a wayward teenager who lost his father at the age of 16, digging himself deep into legal trouble. His behavior showed signs of recklessness and anger.
Even his suicide could be viewed as an act of aggression, said Dr. Doug Jacobs, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who specializes in suicide.
Although he said it’s impossible to know the reason behind Hernandez’s timing, “the reality of what was going on with the Patriots visiting the White House could have been too much to bear. The timing seems more than coincidental.”
Despite his checkered past, the fact remains that Hernandez was a human being, one who experienced such anguish that he thought death was the way out.
“It’s a tragedy for the murder victims and their families, for his family, for his daughter, for the prison guards taking care of him, for the Patriots football team,” Jacobs said. “It’s a tragedy for this young man whose life was in such shatters that he saw suicide as the only option.”
For families concerned about the mental health of their loved ones in prison, they might want to access www. MassMen.org, which is a website specifically directed at the emotional needs of men.