Study: Ex-NFL player suicide rates rose between 2011-2019 - ESPN

Suicide rates among former NFL players rose in the decade between 2011 and 2019, compared to their cohorts in the NBA and Major League Baseball, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

The paper, written as part of the Football Players Study at Harvard University, tracked deaths among former players in the three leagues dating back to 1979. From that point until 2010, suicide rates between the three leagues were statistically similar and below the national average. Beginning in 2011 through 2019, however, the rate for former NFL players was 2.6 times higher than for the NBA and MLB, according to the study.

The overall sample size was relatively small. It logged a total of 101 suicides among the thousands of deaths of former players across all three leagues, from 1979-2019.

The timeframe of the NFL's higher rate roughly coincides with the evolution of awareness about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, a brain condition connected to repetitive head trauma that can only be diagnosed after death.

Rachel Grashow, a senior co-author of the study, said the magnitude of the differential between the rates suggest there are «multiple factors» involved. In an interview, however, Grashow cited a related study published in 2024 that reported nearly a third of former NFL players with general health symptoms — including sleep apnea, hypertension, low testosterone and depression — believed they had CTE. That group was five times more likely to entertain suicidal thoughts than those who did not attribute their symptoms to CTE.

«And so one of the questions from that study was, are we actually seeing higher suicide in football players?» said Grashow, the director of epidemiological research