Around the NFL, Training Camp Style

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by GridIron26

I totally get this mentality - I play football and I always get similar feeling whenever a teammate quit on us every time. However, I am looking through multiple lens, not just football player & football fan lens. I also look through mental health provider lens - I work in a community mental health center and I have Bachelor's in Clinical Psychology.

Anxiety and depression (or any other mental health issues) are not something anyone could simply brush off. Unfortunately, the society still believe in baseless stereotypes surrounding mental health. On almost daily basis, I see how anxiety and depression can affect people and their family/friends. Therefore, I have pretty good undersanding of where Cravens is coming from. To give you a glimpse of severe mental health can do to anyone - my coworker had a case where a patient is diagnosed with severe anxiety; one day, the anxiety got really bad for the patient to a point where he actually believed that his family is trying to take him out in woods to kill him, but the family was simply trying to bring him to my coworker's office due to intesified symptoms. The patient physically harmed his family and they had to call police on the patient. About one week later after being hospitalized, the patient recovered and quickly realized what he did to his family, and now he is filled with guiltness and constantly trying to make it up to his family..

The article also mentioned important facts such as symptoms Cravens experienced; his family and friends felt like Cravens was different person when he was experiencing symptoms; people who knew him for a while defended Cravens's passion for football. I can understand how easy it is for any readers to overlook or simply ignore those facts, however, as a person who have good knowledge regarding mental health, those facts are what convinced me that Cravens's mental health issues are significant than we, fans & NFL, thought it to be.

Please don't get me wrong, this is not to say that Cravens is innocent - how he handled this entire situation is exactly what caused issues for teammates and coaches. By being secretive about what he is going through, he basically left teammates to assume what he was trying to do and naturally, the teammates assumed the worst. I understand completely where Swearinger and teammates are coming from; Swearinger paid Cravens $36k for #36 and then few weeks later, Cravens walked away. How Cravens announced his decision to "retire" and take a break from football to his teammates and walked away from the team right before beginning of the season. Also, Cravens trying to avoid playing due to minor elbow injury while other players are playing with bigger injuries. Those actions are deal-breaker for almost every player and I do not hold it against Redskins players.

Based on the article, it is evident NFL do not have policies nor practice approaches that are friendly for mental health disorders; this pretty much reflect how society views mental health issues. If NFL has policies, are familiar with mental health disorders, and there are mental health providers ready for players; I am 95% certain this entire situation could have been avoided. This is exactly why I said it was bad situation for everyone involved.

First , this is a great post . With that said I will disagree with your last paragraph. Yes we always hope we can catch and help anyone in trouble but I am(personally) just getting tired of everyone blaming the NFL and blaming the game in general for all the problems they endure while playing this game. Did he have any sort of mental health issues before or in college, does anything like this run in his family and as the story says many of his teammates tried to talk to him and help him . Sorry but to say you are 95% certain this could have been avoided ...no ,not sold on that.