Mental health is a hard topic for athletes to speak out about for obvious reasons. Fans expect that the huge amount of money that they're paid should make them happier, and thus can't relate when someone making that kind of money is depressed.
But Indianapolis Colts offensive lineman Braden Smith has been dealing with some very serious mental health issues that have nearly cost him his life.
In an in-depth interview with IndyStar.com, Smith and his wife Courtney detailed a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that he suffers from called "religious scrupulosity OCD." To put it simply, religious scrupulosity involves the non-stop, obsessive focusing on whether anything done will be favorable or sinful in the eyes of good.
Smith told the publication that he was "nowhere to be found" mentally because of his compulsions. At one point, he felt like he was close to taking his own life and Smith had to change the combination to the gun safe.
“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,” Smith said. “I did not care about playing football. I didn’t care about hanging out with my family, with my wife, with my newborn son… I (felt like) was a month away from putting a bullet through my brain.”
Smith elaborated on how his mental disorder has been bothering him through the years.
“There’s the actual, real, true, living God,” Smith said. “And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemning (deity). It’s like every wrong move you make, it’s like smacking the ruler against his hand. ‘Another bad move like that and you’re out of here.’”
“My OCD latches onto critical moments,” he said later. “If I had these thoughts, like, during a game, like, I'm not going to be able to do my compulsions, and it's going to feel really real. That stress continually built up.”
Ultimately, Smith was able to get a combination of medication and OCD-specific therapy to mitigate many of the symptoms. He admits that the condition is still there, but it doesn't have sway over his life right now.
“I still have OCD, but it doesn’t have a hold over me,” Smith said. “It doesn’t dictate my life.”
“Getting help is the least burdensome thing, because it's the short term,” he said. “You gotta look at the long term. People want their wife, their husband, their child, for the long term. If they don't have it for a short term, that's OK, because they know that ultimately there’s gonna be healing.”
