I recall reading news headlines that have called these players out because of their sometimes violent behavior both on and off of the playing field. Curious about how contact sports athletes are more susceptible to developing mental illnesses, I typed “head trauma” and “mental illness in contact sports athletes” into my search engine, which brought me upon a certain disease I had never heard of before: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Intrigued, I decided to search the FIU Library database. One of the first results was titled, “Fatal Flaws: How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain” by Jay Ingram, a Canadian scientist and author. In his book, Ingram explains that CTE gradually creates memory loss, hostility, depression and drug addiction. Ingram even went so far as to say that once CTE has started, it continues to spread, and never ceases, much like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease (235). In his publication, Ingram states that both athletes and normal individuals alike are prone to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The cause is accumulations of a specific protein in the brain, causing it to slowly deteriorate, therefore creating CTE. The speed at which CTE infects a person is determined by one factor: repeated head injury
I recall reading news headlines that have called these players out because of their sometimes violent behavior both on and off of the playing field. Curious about how contact sports athletes are more susceptible to developing mental illnesses, I typed “head trauma” and “mental illness in contact sports athletes” into my search engine, which brought me upon a certain disease I had never heard of before: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Intrigued, I decided to search the FIU Library database. One of the first results was titled, “Fatal Flaws: How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain” by Jay Ingram, a Canadian scientist and author. In his book, Ingram explains that CTE gradually creates memory loss, hostility, depression and drug addiction. Ingram even went so far as to say that once CTE has started, it continues to spread, and never ceases, much like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease (235). In his publication, Ingram states that both athletes and normal individuals alike are prone to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The cause is accumulations of a specific protein in the brain, causing it to slowly deteriorate, therefore creating CTE. The speed at which CTE infects a person is determined by one factor: repeated head injury