ESPN Story About Madison Holleran

Depression does not care if you're wealthy or poor or white or black or pretty or ugly.

Interesting part about NJ kids. Why do you think that is? My college roommate was from Bergen County.

Not sure how the being nice or fun adds pressure. I mean she certainly had her things going on but you make it sound like she should have gone Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters upstate.

As the father of a high achieving HS junior, this stuff is scary to hear about. I hope that family is able to heal as much as possible and find some peace.

I wonder how many of these kids are on "focus" drugs like Adderall, and if there is some correlation to depression and suicide.

We were talking about college applications just last night and were kind of joking about putting "stimulant free" next to her imperfect GPA on her applications.

Depression. wrote:

Depression does not care if you're wealthy or poor or white or black or pretty or ugly.

However, reaction to depression may be different for a low-keyed person vs a star athlete who perceives, real or not, of being the attention of hundreds or thousands of others.

resilience - thanks for your response and respect towards my post. Your point about the vocal activity of the family(ies) makes sense to me. Perhaps that was the integral part of ESPN getting started on the story.

Thank you to everyone else for sharing their stories or additional sides to Madison that we had not previously heard.

I'm glad this discussion has started. I hope it continues.

SADD too wrote:

However, reaction to depression may be different for a low-keyed person vs a star athlete who perceives, real or not, of being the attention of hundreds or thousands of others.

Definitely agree. I said that in response to this comment.

aERgRGE wrote:

Wealthy areas like this should be one of the easiest places to be a teenager.

Being wealthy does not automatically equal being happy or having an easy childhood/life. SADD is right, it is exactly the high pressure, very exposed environment that can cause someone to become stressed and depressed.

In the loop wrote:

As the father of a high achieving HS junior, this stuff is scary to hear about. I hope that family is able to heal as much as possible and find some peace.

I too hope that her family finds peace.

I think the takeaway from this is that we need to teach our kids (and ourselves) how to deal with not meeting expectations and making mistakes. You want your kid to be amazing at everything they do, but they will never succeed in everything. That's a part of life. Life isn't about reaching perfection but about learning to cope/appreciate a lack thereof.

Mental health certainly is something that is overlooked or swept under the rug in many of our communities. We have all these images and messages thrown at us that we should be happy, and we might drive ourselves into a hole thinking there is something wrong with us if we can't appear as happy as everyone else. Only when we get out do we realize how far into the hole we were. I don't believe people should feel embarrassed if they are not feeling great. In fact, seeking to improve your situation with counseling or therapy is braver than simply "toughing it out."

I have a friend that is depressed, has an always changing cocktail of anti-depressants, and openly discusses suicide. I don't know what to do, but listen, suggest therapy, give them some company when I can. How much can you do when I person cannot see outside themselves, is not willing to seek help, yet you show them that you care? You feel like you could do more, but how much can you before you are affected as well? You don't want to abandon this person.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Mental health needs to be checked on a routine basis just as any physical health issue. I don't blame the school, track, the parents or her. Would you blame them if she had cancer? One of the most frustrating things about mental illness is thinking it's your decision.

This is one of the difficulties with treating mental health cases though, even if someone is "checked" for mental health issues say at a general physical, all they have to do is say "I'm fine" and that's that. Oftentimes you have to look at more subtle clues, which will only be presented to family or friends. Like even a casual mention of "suicide" in a joking manner can be a red flag, but then what can you really do, call the police and have the person go to the hospital against their will?

letsbang wrote:

ike even a casual mention of "suicide" in a joking manner can be a red flag, but then what can you really do, call the police and have the person go to the hospital against their will?

Knew a guy who was checked in a psych ward against his will. It actually did more harm than good, as he said it was a very traumatizing experience, the atmosphere was unnerving as all of the patients mingled together, and he no longer trusts the people who initially committed him.

In order to understand just how formidable depression is, you have to understand the anthropological origins of "moods". Our "moods" are nothing more than biological responses to everyday things that affect our health and welfare. For example, when you are sick, your mood will be depressed because in order to survive an illness and get better, you need to rest. This is nothing more than an evolutionary adaptation that is hard wired in all of us. Depression in the proper context serves an important purpose. Likewise, when you are healthy and meet a potential mate or get to do a productive activity, your mood is elevated and you are more productive and successful in your endeavor.

People who are depressed lose control of this basic biological adaptation and have their mood stuck in a depressed state. When in an abnormal depressed state, the normal stresses of life become devastating because depressed people are already down when they take on the stress and do not have the ability to regulate their moods and come out of the depressed state when the stressful event has passed.

What is really frightening about depression is that this basic biological imbalance cannot be overcome with the medication that is currently prescribed for depression. Anti-depressants treat people with depression by putting them into a constant state of an elevated mood. Anti-depressants do not restore the ability to regulate mood that depressed people lack. So, people suffering from depression often realize that the medication has taken over their mood and do not feel like they are "normal" when on medication. They then quit taking the medication and often go into an even more severe state of depression.

There is a promising movement in the mental health profession towards using long-term intensive psychotherapy to treat depression. People who have undergone this sort of treatment have reported to finally be able to properly regulate their moods and no longer get stuck in a depressive state. Unfortunately, many in the mental health profession are reluctant to take people of anti-depressants, and it is also very difficult to know when someone is so depressed that they need intensive psychotherapy, which is very, very expensive.

So, in Madison's case, the only productive lesson to be learned is that you cannot blame anyone or anything. People who are depressed can be taken out of every stressful situation and still end up trying to take their lives. Suicide ends up being the only way the person suffering from depression can believe that they can finally end the constant depressive state. Dealing with depression requires restoring the ability to deal with stress, not eliminating all stress. Unfortunately, it is too difficult for anyone other than a well trained mental health professional to know when there needs to be serious intervention. And even when people recognize the need for serious intervention, the treatment of depression is still a very slowly evolving field with a lot of missteps along the way.

pot kettle wrote:

Trialswatcher wrote:

Rojo, as a board leader you should type better than I. .

If you're going to call out others on their writing skills, at least have the decency to know that it should be "type better than me" not "type better than I"

letsbang wrote:

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Mental health needs to be checked on a routine basis just as any physical health issue. I don't blame the school, track, the parents or her. Would you blame them if she had cancer? One of the most frustrating things about mental illness is thinking it's your decision.

This is one of the difficulties with treating mental health cases though, even if someone is "checked" for mental health issues say at a general physical, all they have to do is say "I'm fine" and that's that. Oftentimes you have to look at more subtle clues, which will only be presented to family or friends. Like even a casual mention of "suicide" in a joking manner can be a red flag, but then what can you really do, call the police and have the person go to the hospital against their will?

I don't just mean at a once a year physical. It needs to be openly discussed throughout the season and unstigmatized. Coaches need to build trust with their athletes. One-on-one meetings are a good idea, but I also feel like anyone, especially athletes, can benefit from a professional therapist or sports psychologist.

I am with you re: freshman year. I was in over my head on a talent level for track/xc, and training went from 25-30 miles per week to 60-70. Academics went from a cakewalk to a real challenge. Structure disappeared. I was 600 miles from home, and felt like everyone at school came from wealthier families. And a lot of the dorm-mates i elected to be friends with were partying a fair amount. Ay 18, i did not have the maturity to handle it, and had no sense of doing anything well. Teammates were nice enough to check in with me, but as a walk-on, coaches didn't have much of an interest.

Would love to have that period back, but I'm happy I was able to come through the other side and have so many wonderful experiences and so much success as I grew and matured. Depression makes it hard to see you might get to a better place.

It is a heart-wrenching story, no doubt.

I'm sure nothing I've experienced can relate to what Madison was going through. My toughest times in life, the only times I thought of doing something drastic, were around the same age. However, mine was as I was finishing my senior year of high school, trying to decide where to go to school, what to study, etc., scared as hell that I wouldn't make the right decision and then my whole life would be ruined in that moment. Some people put a LOT of pressure on themselves to try to live up to an ideal, and it seems this was true with Madison.

Side note, and probably a bit macabre - I am pretty stunned that the girl who found her after she had jumped from 9 stories up did not realize that is what had happened, and that the description was that it looked like she merely had a cut above her eye.

A horrible tragedy, and my heart goes out to her friends and family.

I sometimes wonder why articles like this aren't accompanied with numbers for suicide prevention lines (or if the brojos might want to include one next to the link)? There's a fair amount of evidence that highly publicized suicides can prompt others to do the same, and this should be at the front of journalists' minds when they cover stories like this.

Which demon deacon are you? I assume this means you must have come through the Millar regime.

Perhaps she really wanted to play soccer. The truth is that when depression is clouding one's judgment, all the platitudes offered for support tend to fall on deaf ears. We need to try to be there for those who are depressed, but we can only do so much, and sometimes we lose a few people. We like to play armchair quarterback and wonder what we could have done differently because it seems so senseless and avoidable to those on the outside. May her family continue to heal as much as possible.

As the article noted and as others have mentioned, an important part of this story is the image that Madison was able to create that did not reflect her inner feelings. She looked beautiful, talented, happy, smart, accomplished. Seems like the perfect young lady. Then she kills herself. An inner torture that was not readily apparent to most people.

These days we are able to create this online image that can be a complete fallacy from how we really feel. The younger generations are heavily involved with these image-based apps, I wonder how much they feel the pressure to appear in a certain way, more so than past generations that only had to appear happy in person. Now a young person might feel the need to appear happy in personal interactions and online. That could be an overwhelming act to put all the time. We need a place to simply be ourselves without having to create an image.