WARNING this text discusses suicide and psychological well being battles which some readers could discover confronting.
“My brain is broken,” Adrian Mackenzie advised his household.
After the deaths of former AFL stars Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck had been revealed to be brought on by power traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Mackenzie knew what was flawed with him earlier than he would additionally take his personal life aged 51, his household advised the Herald Sun’s Jon Ralph.
In the weeks main as much as his dying, the previous Sandringham VFL star checked himself right into a psychiatric facility to make sure he didn’t succumb to the suicidal ideas that plagued his thoughts as his signs spiralled, however with none point out of CTE by his docs, his household say he missed out on a potential lifeline.
CTE is a mind situation brought on by repeated blows to the top, resulting in early-onset dementia.
The signs embody reminiscence loss, impulse management issues, despair and suicidal ideation, and sometimes don’t current till years after the final head trauma, with the situation solely capable of be identified after dying.
Both Frawley and Tuck dedicated suicide, and had been identified with CTE, with their households reporting strikingly comparable signs forward of their deaths.
Mackenzie, a double-premiership participant with Sandringham in 1992 and 1994 below legendary coach Trevor Barker earlier than profitable a Best and Fairest with West Gippsland membership Nar Nar Goon, is the fifth footballer to be identified with the situation, however not like the 4 earlier diagnoses (together with AFL legend Polly Farmer), Mackenzie didn’t play within the high flight.
He was generally known as a household man that “had everything”, in accordance with sister Briohny.
“Good looking … sportsman. Girls loved him. He had everything. A good business, successful. Two young boys,” Briohny advised the Herald Sun.
His different sister, Anthea, mentioned he was the “glue” of the household.
“We called him the golden child. He hated that. But he was very loved by everybody. I actually think he was the glue that held the family together,” Anthea mentioned.
Briohny tells of how Adrian’s fast spiral was “distressing”.
“He just rang me basically telling me how quickly he was struggling,” she mentioned.
“He rang me up and just started crying. You could tell how desperate he was to have the conversation.
“Then he would go for a jog to clear his head and then he would spiral again a few days later.
“It was distressing towards the end.”
Mackenzie checked himself twice into psychiatric services, the place he was prescribed a cocktail of medicines; Mirtazapine, Olanzapine, Lexapro, Propranolol, Imovane, Circadian, Valium, Temazepam, Seroquel, Ritalin, Kalma.
Despite his prescriptions, he was discharged after his second stint in a psychiatric ward and advised to test again in a fortnight.
The household consider that the potential for CTE was by no means mentioned with Adrian.
“We feel certain that if CTE had been discussed with Adrian this would have been a lifeline for him,” Anthea mentioned.
Briohny tells of how Adrian himself started to attach the dots between his toughman soccer profession and his signs in his later levels.
“He said, ‘I am going crazy, I think I have got this thing that Danny Frawley had’,” she mentioned.
“He had mentioned that he thought he had it based on reading stories in the paper about Shane Tuck and Danny Frawley.
“For me what stood out was the terms he used about the anxiety and panic he was feeling. And the fear he had about killing himself.
“He would compare the anxiety he had to a tiger being on his chest clawing at him. That is the panic.
“When I think about that night, he was in such a panic.”
By early May 2021, Mackenzie was aware of his suicidal ideas, and was asking household and pals to be a part of a roster to stick with him at night time to keep away from self-harm.
“He was very aware that he was suicidal,” Briohny mentioned.
“And he was very clear that he did not want to kill himself. But he was having those thoughts.”
With his household reassured by his launch from the psychiatric ward that he was making progress, Mackenzie was unaccompanied on the night time he took his personal life, within the final week of May.
With the continued Senate inquiry into concussions and repeated head trauma in touch sports activities, the Mackenzie household made a submission urging the federal government to “encourage medical practitioners to review procedures when diagnosing patients with a history of playing contact sport.”
“Adrian was actively seeking and trying therapies to manage his symptoms beyond prescription medications because he was adamant that he did not have a mental illness or depression, but that his brain was ‘broken’,” the submission reads.
The AFL has dedicated $25 million over a ten yr interval on a longitudinal research into CTE in response to current lawsuits from former gamers that allege the league and their golf equipment had been negligent in managing head traumas over the course of their careers, whereas the Senate inquiry has additionally revealed that rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns suffered from seizures on account of the top traumas sustained over the course of his adorned 14-year profession.
Read Adrian Mackenzie’s harrowing story of CTE and his household’s pleas for soccer codes and governments
Source: www.news.com.au
