Suicide among Retired Professional Athletes: A Case Study
on
A nomic Suicide
Viktor Stigson SOC 2020: Sociology Classics Professor Paul Colomy “Suicide Among Retired Professional Athletes: A Case Study on Anomic Suicide” was written for Professor Paul Colomy’s “Sociological Classics” class during winter quarter 2013. As a core
requirement of the sociology curriculum at DU, this class provided an in-depth examination of the most central concepts in the field of sociology, including the work of Emile Durkheim in his groundbreaking book Suicide.
Faced with the task of applying Durkheim’s concept of suicide to modern-day phenomena, I
naturally turned to my go-to topic of interest: sports. Through my (addictive) habit of keeping up with the latest sports news, I had been closely following the ongoing controversy surrounding
suicide among athletes. Roughly a year after the highly scrutinized suicide of legendary NFL
linebacker Junior Seau, the sports world was still caught up in a furious debate about the po-
tential connection between contact sports like football and Chronic Traumatic Ecephalopathy (CTE), a depression-inducing disease caused by repeated concussions.
Personally, I wasn’t sure where I stood in this debate. Of course, I couldn’t deny the correlation
between head trauma through sports and CTE, as research had clearly established. At the
same time, I couldn’t possibly attribute CTE to every known instance of depression and suicide
among retired athletes. After all, athletes in non-contact sports have also suffered from these ailments. Maybe the cause wasn’t so much psychological as it was sociological. I decided to investigate. Enter Emile Durkheim and his concept of anomie, the lack of social regulation.
Introduction On May 2, 2012, the sports world was stunned by yet another shocking addition to the long line of suicides by former professional athletes. This time, it was 10-time NFL All-Pro linebacker Junior Seau who had chosen to end his own life, turning a gun on himself in his beachside house in California (Marikar, 2012). The sports world was up in arms: How could such a legendary player with everything going for him choose to end it all? What led him to make such a tragic decision? 36
WRIT Large: 2014
In the aftermath of this suicide, many sports psychologists offered explanations, mostly citing NFL players’ exposure to repeated concussions from consistent hits to their heads. According to this theory, these violent hits could eventually result in a disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which produces side effects like memory loss, dementia, aggression, confusion, and depression (“What is CTE?”, 2009). There seems to be some credence to this theory, as many other former athletes of contact sports also suffered from CTE and committed