Teen athlete suicides leaving pain in many communities
In pandemic, concerns grow over normally active youths’ mental health, forced isolation
The sounds in her home can become unbearable some days. Heather Wendling will sometimes hear the footsteps of her sons walking in the dining room and think it’s her daughter. She will hear the front door creak when her husband comes home after work and wonder if it’s her daughter. She will hear the phone ring and know it’s not her daughter, but perhaps another friend or volleyball parent calling to offer condolences or help.
When it all becomes too much, Wendling will sometimes head out to the backyard and sit on the swing set her daughter, London, used to play on as a little girl. “You can feel her energy there,” Wendling said, and when she is rocking back and forth, she wrestles with the questions of how London could have taken her own life at her home in Ridgefield, Wash., in the early morning hours of Sept. 21. She was 13.
London had shown no signs of depression or suicidal thoughts in the weeks leading up to her death, Wendling said, but like so many teens during the coronavirus pandemic, her life had radically changed in the previous six months. She had shifted to online learning when her school district shut down in-person classes, and her social life had faded even more when her volleyball club canceled the season because of the pandemic.
“We’re living in unprecedented times. I never thought this would happen to my daughter. We fought so hard to give her a good life. We tried to do everything right,” Wendling said. “Their world has come to a screeching halt, a lot of them. They’re not in sports, they’re not going to school, they’re not hanging out with the friends. ... We found out too late, and I don’t want other parents to find out too late.”
Youth suicide was already at a record high before the pandemic — with increases among teens every year from 2007-17, it is the second-leading cause of death among highschool-aged students — and some researchers fear the mental health consequences of coronavirus restrictions on not only schools, but also sports, could help elevate those numbers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a survey recently asking young adults whether they had thought about killing themselves in the past 30 days; 1 in 4 said they had.
For many teens who have been restricted from playing sports, the pandemic has not only stripped away the opportunity for exercise, competition and potential college scholarships — but also has deprived those young athletes of the identity and social circles provided by sports. The mental health benefits that athletics can give students have been a driving force for thousands of parents who have protested the shutdown of sports in their communities across the country, with many often fearing the worst if their kids aren’t able to play.
Suicides among teen athletes have rocked several youth programs since the pandemic began in March, leaving parents and coaches scrambling — often from a distance — to help grieving kids in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
In the days after London’s death, volleyball teams from around the country rallied in support — youth players in states that were allowed to play inked her initials and her No. 15 on their hands during games. A coach from Michigan reached out to London’s coaches to say he had gone through a similar tragedy. A team from Oregon sent volleyballs signed with inspirational messages and slogans, including, “Stop the stigma” and “Talk about it.”
“It’s important for us as adults, when working with these kids, to really be asking them questions and see what kind of support they need,” said Hillary DeVore, one of London’s coaches with Excel Northwest volleyball. “London’s story isn’t the first story that this has happened.”
A survey of high school athletes conducted by the University of Wisconsin this summer found that 68 percent of the 3,243 teens polled have reported feelings of anxiety and depression at levels that typically require medical intervention — nearly 40 percent higher than past studies. The study, which also found that physical activity levels were
50 percent lower for kids than before the pandemic, was labeled “striking and concerning” by one researcher.
The lead researcher of the study at Wisconsin, Tim McGuine, said, “The greatest risk [to student-athletes] is not COVID-19. It’s suicide and drug use.” The study caught the eye of the organization overseeing high school sports, the National Federation of State High School Associations, which was already dealing with an uptick in reports from state athletic directors about mental health concerns for teen athletes whose seasons were in flux.
“We already knew going into this that we had increasing levels of depression and anxiety among young people ... but now we have kids that don’t have school, they don’t have sports,” said Michael Koester, who leads the medical advisory committee for the NFHS. “Many of us are concerned with that. Obviously, there’s concerns about the virus, contracting it and passing it on to others. But this isn’t a zero-sum game.”
Concerns over mental health have driven protests over the shutdown of sports throughout the country since the beginning of the pandemic.
In New Mexico, after the state government canceled fall sports in October, a protester picketing at a local library held up a sign that read: “Stop Suicide and Depression In Teens.
Allow Sports.”
In North Dakota, as parents and athletes protested the postponement of the winter high school sports season in November, Grand Forksbased sports psychologist Erin Haugen continued to see a flood of referrals for teen athletes across the state who were struggling with mental health because of restrictions on sports.
“It’s certainly complicated in both directions, because not playing can have mental health implications,” Haugen said. “But then also playing with that uncertainty, or having one of their teammates get ill, or they’re getting ill, certainly has mental health implications as well . ... It might be hard to find the best option from a mental health perspective.”
Teens who tie their identity and social circle to sports have been disrupted, which causes “higher risk of challenging psychological and emotional functions,” Haugen said, adding that the uncertainty around when sports will be played has functioned almost like an injury. But unlike a traditional injury that keeps an athlete from the field, a course for rehabilitation cannot be charted to navigate the pandemic.
“I would characterize this as a crisis,” said Adela Roxas, a sports psychologist in Virginia Beach, Va., who works with middle school and high school athletes. “Not having the athletic participation is a loss. These losses have to be grieved. Grief is also a part of coping through the pandemic, grieving what we lost and what we’re not able to do in this situation . ... There’s definitely been an increase in symptoms.”