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Kevin Chapman briefly stepped away from watching Monday’s Bills-Bengals game at his home in the Louisville area when his phone started buzzing. Text messages alerted him to the news that Bills safety Damar Hamlin had a cardiac arrest on the field.
Returning to the television, Chapman, a licensed psychologist and director of the Kentucky Center for Anxiety and related Disorders, felt himself going into clinical mode while following an ESPN live stream. “I immediately thought of the players who witnessed it,” says Chapman, a former Division III player. “I was like, ‘Shoot, this could be a budding trauma. They will have to take care of their mental health.”
Think of what happened to Hamlin as an emotional blast beam rippling in concentric circles, flooding thousands of spectators on the sidelines and in the bleachers of Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium; millions more viewers at home; and countless others who later saw a repeat of Hamlin’s fall after a sliding tackle. “Every time we see something life-threatening, our normal human reaction is instinctive,” says Chapman. But the potential impact is strong among Hamlin’s other players, many of whom literally surrounded the 24-year-old to protect everyone else from the sight of his CPR and defibrillation, which restored his heartbeat before he was transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
“These are the people who will be most at risk of really adverse effects,” says Janis Whitlock, a developmental psychologist and senior counselor at The Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the emotional health of teens and young adults. “Partly because of their association with [Hamlin] as a friend, a teammate, a colleague, but also because it could have been any of them and they know it. I imagine many of them are processing these feelings on some level, whether explicitly or not.”
The Ghosts have undeniably improved thanks to Hamlin’s remarkable recovery – he recently had his breathing tube removed allowing him to FaceTime a team meeting – and both the Bills (vs. Patriots) and Bengals (vs. Ravens) are set to host their respective regular season finals this Sunday as planned. But mental health experts warn that the possible effects could be longer for those closest to the epicenter of the ‘outbreak’, such as family, friends and teammates, especially if a traumatic past experience has already taken its toll on them. (2021 article by physician Jim Lynch published in Current sports medicine reports found that elite athletes suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder – most commonly associated with members of the military but can actually affect people from all walks of life – to a noticeably higher rate than the general population, approximately 13% vs. 9%.)
“When I think about this event, PTSD is an issue,” says Chapman. “Players may have flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive memories, things that perpetuate the idea that they may be in danger when in reality they are not.”
Adds David R. McDuff, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and psychiatrist for the Baltimore Orioles for the last 26 seasons: “Sometimes the emotional response can be the same. Suppose the parent of an NFL player died of a heart attack. It can trigger an automatic reconnection to that past event by activating its intensity.
Here, McDuff, who has held similar roles in sports psychiatry for the Ravens (1996 to 2013) and the Colts (15 to 18), speaks from specific work experience. In February 2003, Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler collapsed on the field during spring training and later died of heat stroke caused by multiple organ failure caused by the use of the stimulant ephedrine (which was later banned by federal authorities). Flying to the team’s hotel in Fort Lauderdale, McDuff spent the next four days welcoming a stream of players, coaches and other staff to his room, sometimes past midnight, and helping them process what they saw.
“There was a lot of insomnia among the players close to him,” recalls McDuff. “[But] spread to the whole team. It just made or made it more likely that someone would have a stress reaction to a traumatic event, which shows how fragile life can be at times.”
McDuff says that over the next two seasons, he witnessed a significant increase in the number of players and staff seeking his services, from around 35% to over 55%, the highest he had ever seen in nearly three decades of professional sports experience. “For me, it was pretty strong evidence that if you have support services, mental health and wellness services available, they will be used,” says McDuff.
There is no doubt that mental health resources for affected players are plentiful, from the decade-long NFL Life Line – a free and confidential crisis hotline, overseen in part by The Jed Foundation – to the team-wide follow-up calls that NFLPA leaders conducted with the Bills and Bengals this week. But experts stress that long-term, proactive screening for symptoms is just as important as any progress. “In situations like [Bechler’s and Hamlin’s], you have the usual level of service seeking,” says McDuff. “But in addition, you open your eyes and ears.”
Whitlock (who herself is not directly associated with the NFL Life Line) adds, “All of these teams have psychologists who are definitely in contact with each of these team members and that bond should remain strong for the next two weeks to about a month until the psychologist will not be happy with where each player has arrived. They will look for all the usual signs of a mental disorder: poor concentration, mood swings, perhaps sudden outbursts. They will look for physical obstacles, anything that interferes with normal functioning.
No two people follow identical paths when dealing with trauma, just as no two people are affected in exactly the same way. Medication, therapy – Therapies “vary depending on what exactly is being triggered,” says Whitlock. “There are many methods a therapist uses, and I’m sure one of the first things they do if you tag someone who is struggling is understand where the symptoms are and then make a plan of how you’re going to approach them.”
For now, in the midst of the immediate upheaval of an event like what happened to Hamlin, the most important thing is to keep space for those who may feel a certain way and let them know that it’s okay to talk about what they’re going through, that they’re not alone in this fight.
“It’s going to be very, very important for everyone caring for the injured to keep an eye on them,” says Whitlock. “Highly athletic men are often trained to be emotionally stoic. In this case, I would really encourage them to allow support, to rely on people around them to really support them.”
