New Study Says NFL Players Not At Greater Risk For Suicide

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows no evidence indicating former NFL players are at greater risk of committing suicide than the general U.S. population.

New Study Says NFL Players Not At Greater Risk For Suicide

The study also finds they’re also significantly less likely to die from cancer, heart disease, and homicides.

The study, published this month in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, examined the suicide death rate among a group of 3,439 retired NFL players who played at least five seasons from 1959 to 1988, before the league began instituting several recent safety measures.

From 1979 to 2013, that group of former players experienced 12 suicide deaths – less than half the 25 expected in a comparable section of the population based on gender, race and age. Non-lineman in particular were found to be significantly less likely to commit suicide than the general population. Lineman were also less likely according to the study, though by a much smaller margin. However, the study also found NFL players faced higher chances of dying from Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders.

Incidentally enough, the study comes at a time of increasing concern about the effects of brain trauma and the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease which gained mainstream attention with the 2015 release of the docudrama Concussion, starring Will Smith. 

“Clearly, our one study does not resolve the issue of suicide in football,” the study’s conclusion says. “Before reliable conclusions can be drawn on any relationship among football play, concussion, CTE, and suicide, more work needs to be done in several areas: (1) quantitatively assessing football-related risk factors, particularly in collecting valid concussion data; (2) collecting longitudinal non–football related suicide risk factor data, including the existence and prevalence of recurring pain among current and retired players; and (3) analysis of how the higher income and socioeconomic profile of professional football players compared to the general population positively or negatively affects suicide risk.”

The study also notes multiple other limitations, like the fact that it only counted players who died from a suicide attempt and didn’t account for living or deceased players who experienced significant psychological impairments. The average career length of the subjects included was eight years, which is longer than the average player.

Overall, there were 537 deaths among the former players studied, compared to an expected 901, putting the mortality rate a little under 60% of that in the general population. Death rates from cancer (59%), heart diseases (75%) and assault and homicide (14%) also “continue to be significantly less than expected,” the study said.

“The issue of football players being at higher risk of suicide than the general population has been raised in the popular and scientific literature,” Dr. Douglas Trout, deputy director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard and Field Studies at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said in a media release.

“In studying this particular cohort of professional football players, our researchers did not find this to be the case; more studies are needed before further conclusions can be reached.”

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