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Mental Health

The danger of high-functioning depression as told by a college student

Overachievers can struggle with mental health issues, too.

I first saw a psychiatrist for my anxiety and depression as a junior in high school.

During her evaluation, she asked about my coursework. I told her that I had a 4.0 GPA and had filled my schedule with pre-AP and AP classes. A puzzled look crossed her face. She asked about my involvement in extracurricular activities. As I rattled off the long list of groups and organizations I was a part of, her frown creased further.

Finally, she set down her pen and looked at me, saying something along the lines of "You seem to be pretty high-functioning, but your anxiety and depression seem pretty severe. Actually, it's teens like you who scare me a lot."

Now I was confused. What was scary about my condition? From the outside, I was functioning like a perfectly "normal" teenager. In fact, I was somewhat of an overachiever.

I was working through my mental illnesses and I was succeeding, so what was the problem?

I left that appointment with a prescription for Lexapro and a question that I would continue to think about for years. The answer didn't hit me all at once.

Instead, it came to me every time I heard a suicide story on the news saying, "By all accounts, they were living the perfect life."

It came to me as I crumbled under pressure over and over again, doing the bare minimum I could to still meet my definition of success.

It came to me as I began to share my story and my illness with others, and I was met with reactions of "I had no idea" and "I never would have known." It's easy to put depression into a box of symptoms.

lighted candles on man's hand lying on the floorPhoto by Fernando @cferdophotography on Unsplash

Even though we're often told that mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes, I think we're still stuck with certain "stock images" of mental health in our heads.

When we see depression and anxiety in adolescents, we see teens struggling to get by in their day-to-day lives. We see grades dropping, and we see involvement replaced by isolation. But it doesn't always look like this.

And when we limit our idea of mental illness, at-risk people slip through the cracks.

We don't see the student with the 4.0 GPA or the student who's active in choir and theater or a member of the National Honor Society or the ambitious teen who takes on leadership roles in a religious youth group.

person holding white printer paperPhoto by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

No matter how many times we are reminded that mental illness doesn't discriminate, we revert back to a narrow idea of how it should manifest, and that is dangerous.

Recognizing this danger is what helped me find the answer to my question.

Watching person after person — myself included — slip under the radar of the "depression detector" made me realize where that fear comes from. My psychiatrist knew the list of symptoms, and she knew I didn't necessarily fit them. She understood it was the reason that, though my struggles with mental illness began at age 12, I didn't come to see her until I was 16.

If we keep allowing our perception of what mental illness looks like to dictate how we go about recognizing and treating it, we will continue to overlook people who don't fit the mold.

We cannot keep forgetting that there are people out there who, though they may not be able to check off every symptom on the list, are heavily and negatively affected by their mental illness. If we forget, we allow their struggle to continue unnoticed, and that is pretty scary.

This article was written by Amanda Leventhal and originally appeared on 06.03.16

From Your Site Articles

Health

Inside the heads of people who are always late, as explained by stick figures.

Everyone knows a person like this or is one themselves!

I’m late.

This post was written by Tim Urban and originally published on Wait But Why.

I woke up this morning to a text. It was a link:

"optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late.”

Intriguing. Nothing's better than the headline: "The reason people are [bad quality that describes you] is actually because they're [good quality]."

I got to reading. And as it turns out, according to the article, late people are actually the best people ever.They're optimistic and hopeful:

"People who are continuously late are actually just more optimistic. They believe they can fit more tasks into a limited amount of time more than other people and thrive when they're multitasking. Simply put, they're fundamentally hopeful."

They're big-thinking:

"People who are habitually late don't sweat over the small stuff, they concentrate on the big picture and see the future as full of infinite possibilities."

Late people just get it:

"People with a tendency for tardiness like to stop and smell the roses…life was never meant to be planned down to the last detail. Remaining excessively attached to timetables signifies an inability to enjoy the moment."

By the end of the article, I had never felt prouder to be a chronically late person.

But also, what the hell is going on? Late people are the worst. It's the quality I like least in myself. And I'm not late because I like to smell the roses or because I can see the big picture or because the future is full of infinite possibilities. I'm late because I'm insane.

So I thought about this for a minute, and I think I figured out what's going on. The issue is that there are two kinds of lateness:

1. OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does not negatively impact anyone else — like being late to a group hangout or a party. Things can start on time and proceed as normal with or without the late person being there yet.

2. Not-OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does negatively impact others — like being late to a two-person dinner or meeting or anything else that simply can't start until the late party arrives.

John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.

But if you read the comment section under Haltiwanger's article, people are furious with him for portraying lateness in a positive light. And that's because they're thinking about the far less excusable not-OK lateness.

John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.

All of this has kind of left me with no choice but to take a quick nine-hour break from working on a gargantuan SpaceX post to discuss not-OK late people.

When it comes to people who are chronically not-OK late, I think there are two subgroups:

Group 1: Those who don't feel bad or wrong about it. These people are assholes.

Group 2: Those who feel terrible and self-loathing about it. These people have problems.

Group 1 is simple. They think they're a little more special than everyone else, like the zero-remorse narcissist at the top of Haltiwanger's article. They're unappealing. Not much else to discuss here.

Punctual people think all not-OK late people are in Group 1 (as the comments on this post will show) — because they're assuming all late people are sane people.

When a sane person thinks a certain kind of behavior is fine, they do it. When they think it's wrong, they don't do it. So to a punctual person — one who shows up on time because they believe showing up late is the wrong thing to do — someone who's chronically late must be an asshole who thinks being late is OK.

But that's misunderstanding the entire second group, who, despite being consistently late, usually detest the concept of making other people wait. Let call them CLIPs (Chronically Late Insane Persons).

While both groups of not-OK late people end up regularly frustrating others, a reliable way to identify a Group 2 CLIP is a bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves — some deep inner drive to inexplicably miss the beginning of movies, endure psychotic stress running to catch the train, crush their own reputation at work, etc., etc. As much as they may hurt others, they usually hurt themselves even more.

I spent around 15% of my youth standing on some sidewalk alone, angrily kicking rocks, because yet again, all the other kids had gotten picked up and I was still waiting for my mom. When she finally arrived, instead of being able to have a pleasant conversation with her, I'd get into the car seething. She always felt terrible. She has problems.

My sister once missed an early morning flight, so they rescheduled her for the following morning. She managed to miss that one too, so they put her on a flight five hours later. Killing time during the long layover, she got distracted on a long phone call and missed that flight too. She has problems.

I've been a CLIP my whole life. I've made a bunch of friends mad at me, I've embarrassed myself again and again in professional situations, and I've run a cumulative marathon through airport terminals.

When I'm late, it's often the same story, something like this:

I'll be meeting someone, maybe a professional contact, at, say, a coffee place at 3:00. When I lay out my schedule for the day, I'll have the perfect plan. I'll leave early, arrive early, and get there around 2:45. That takes all the stress out of the situation, and that's ideal because non-stressful commutes are one of my favorite things. It'll be great — I'll stroll out, put on a podcast, and head to the subway. Once I'm off the subway, with time to spare, I'll take a few minutes to peruse storefronts, grab a lemonade from a street vendor, and enjoy New York. It'll be such a joy to look up at the architecture, listen to the sounds, and feel the swell of people rushing by — oh magnificent city!

All I have to do is be off the subway by 2:45. To do that, I need to be on the subway by 2:25, so I decide to be safe and get to the subway by 2:15. So I have to leave my apartment by 2:07 or earlier, and I'm set. What a plan.

Here's how it'll play out (if you're new to WBW, you're advised to check this out before proceeding):

Making plans on time.

Maybe some procrastination.

Avoiding the issues.

Arguing over avoiding the issues.

Some dawdling.

Some more dawdling.

And some lingering.

And some more lingering.

Is this dragging my feet?

This is dragging my feet.

This is becoming a problem.

This is feeling uncomfortable.

This IS uncomfortable.

This IS a problem.

But I’m cool.

So cool.

Ice cold like a fighter pilot.

I’m a chillin’.

Now worries my way.

Not thinking about it.

Positive thoughts.

Positive action... well now.

It will all workout.

Maybe I’m gonna be late.

I’m gonna be late.

Oopsie.

And that’s the traffic.

It’s the traffics fault.

This map is broken.

denial, circumstances, schedule, madcap, impetu

Perfect timing on being late. Nailed it.

CLIPs are strange people. I'm sure each CLIP is insane in their own special way, and to understand how they work, you'll usually have to get to some dark inner psychology.

For me, it's some mix of these three odd traits:

1. I'm late because I'm in denial about how time works.

The propensity of CLIPs to underestimate how long things take comes out of some habitual delusional optimism. Usually what happens is, of all the times the CLIP has done a certain activity or commute, what they remember is that one time things went the quickest. And that amount of time is what sticks in their head as how long that thing takes. I don't think there's anything that will get me to internalize that packing for a weeklong trip takes 20 minutes. In my head, it's eternally a five-minute task. You just take out the bag, throw some clothes in it, throw your toiletries in, zip it up, and done. Five minutes. The empirical data that shows that there are actually a lot of little things to think about when you pack and that it takes 20 minutes every time is irrelevant. Packing is clearly a five-minute task. As I type this, that's what I believe.

2. I'm late because I have a weird aversion to changing circumstances.

Not sure what the deal is with this, but something in me is strangely appalled by the idea of transitioning from what I'm currently doing to doing something else. When I'm at home working, I hate when there's something on my schedule that I have to stop everything for to go outside and do. It's not that I hate the activity — once I'm there I'm often pleased to be there — it's an irrational resistance to the transition. The positive side of this is it usually means I'm highly present when I finally do haul my ass somewhere, and I'm often among the last to leave.

3. Finally, I'm late because I'm mad at myself.

There's a pretty strong correlation here — the worse I feel about my productivity so far that day, the more likely I am to be late. When I'm pleased with how I've lived the day so far, the Rational Decision-Maker has a much easier time taking control of the wheel. I feel like an adult, so it's easy to act like an adult. But times when the monkey had his way with me all day, when the time rolls around that I need to stop working and head out somewhere, I can't believe that this is all I've gotten done. So my brain throws a little tantrum, refusing to accept the regrettable circumstances, and stages a self-flagellating protest, saying, "NO. This cannot be the situation. Nope. You didn't do what you were supposed to do, and now you'll sit here and get more done, even if it makes you late.”

So yeah, that's why I'm late. Because I have problems.

Don't excuse the CLIPs in your life — it's not OK, and they need to fix it. But remember: It's not about you. They have problems.

This article originally appeared on 04.07.16

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Pop Culture

Paralyzed musicians create beautiful sounds once again—using nothing but their brainwaves

The talent is still in their minds.

Canva

A string quartet that needs no instruments

Imagine seeing a string quartet play beautiful music.

Strings are pretty much my favorite kind of instrument; it's hard for me to listen to a cello or violin and not feel something. And when you get four musicians all playing together? Beautiful.

In 2015, Plymouth University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London teamed up to create a spectacular string quartet.

But this wasn't your typical performance.

The musicians in this quartet all had severe motor impairments, which can affect a person's ability to move.

Motor impairments can be caused by a number of different things, such as a motor neuron disease like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease). In severe cases, a person may not be able to move or speak at all.

For musicians like these folks, their condition would normally present a considerable barrier to being able to play music like they once did. But in this case, researchers and doctors found a way to let them play anyway.

The thought was this: If the musicians still have musical talent but simply can't do the physical motions, we'll just make it so they don't need to do any physical motions.

Researchers place device on the head of musician.

Image pulled from YouTube video

First, researchers put stretchy, cap-like devices that can read brainwaves on the musician's heads.

Then, during the performance, a computer screen presented the four musicians with selections of short different musical phrases.

The musicians could choose what phrase they wanted by simply looking at it. The caps then picked up these brainwaves and sent the information to four other, nearby musicians who played the music for them (so, technically, maybe this would be an octet).

The end result was brilliant — four motor-impaired musicians, picking and playing in real-time to create beautiful music, all with their brainwaves.

One of their performances was captured in this short, nine-minute documentary by Tim Grabham and professor Eduardo Reck Miranda, who spearheaded the project.

Check out their brilliant performance here:

Brain-computer interfaces have gotten us this far and are taking us further still.

We've already seen brain-computer interfaces that can help us control prosthetic arms with thoughts and restore senses of hearing and touch to folks without them.

There's a lot more work to be done in these fields, of course, but one day soon, we might be hearing, seeing, and visiting a lot more performances and projects like this.

This article originally appeared on 10.25.16

science

We could all benefit from breaking down some of the walls in our lives.

Images via Amnesty Poland

This article originally appeared on 05.26.16

You'd be hard-pressed to find a place on Earth with more wall-based symbolism than Berlin, Germany.

But there, in the heart of Germany's capital city, strangers sat across from one another, staring into each other's eyes. To the uninitiated, it may look as though you've witnessed some sort of icy standoff. The truth, however, couldn't be more different.

This was about tearing down walls between people.

Image from Amnesty Poland.

Amnesty International recently released a video in which they show strangers breaking down barriers with the help of eye contact.

The refugee crisis is a contentious issue worldwide. Reasonable people can disagree about the right path forward in finding homes for people displaced by conflict or economic crisis. What's sometimes missing from this conversation, it seems, is empathy.

But what if we could inject some empathy into that debate? And what if it was as easy as making eye contact?

Refugees sat across from Europeans. In many cases, the two parties didn't even share a language; all they had was eye contact. The organization's theory? That it should be enough.

Image from Amnesty Poland.

The video's a powerful look at what it means to share in our common humanity. The eye contact bit? That comes from psychologist Arthur Aron.

Aron's 1997 study, "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness ," put forth the idea that a bond between two strangers can be created quickly through physical proximity and an exchange of specific personal information. In additional studies, Aron found that closeness and bonding can sometimes develop even more strongly through sustained eye contact.

In the nearly 20 years since publishing, Aron's work — which has often been presented in a sort of "here's how to fall in love in less than an hour" type of way — has seen a bit of an online resurgence and for good reason: It seems to work. Pretty neat, right?

Image from Amnesty Poland.

Refugees and borders aside, there are some related studies that have concluded roughly the same thing: Simply existing and interacting with other people can help you empathize with them.

For example, a 1997 study by Gregory Herek of the University of California at Davis suggests that straight people who personally know gay people are more likely to be accepting of gay and lesbian men and women. Further, the more gay people they know, the more likely they are to be cool about everything.

Photo by Burak Kara/Getty Images.

Basically, these studies confirm the old adage: It's hard to hate what you know.

If you personally know someone from a misunderstood group of people — whether that's based on refugee status, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other often generalized factors — it's a whole lot harder to make sweeping statements about that group.

We've all got walls of our own that we wrestle with every day. What's important is that we're always working to tear them down.

So while you and I may not have been in that room in Berlin, there are almost certainly situations in which we, as a society, can benefit from making use of these same tactics in our own lives.

You can watch Amnesty International's video, "Look Beyond Borders," below.

Clarification 11/02/2017: This post was updated to clarify that Aron's 1997 publication did not explicitly discuss his research into eye contact.

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Family

Nature does wonders for your brain. Here's how to escape if you're stuck in a city.

When I sit on a pillow on my bedroom floor to meditate, the first thing I notice isn’t my breath, or a sense of peace, or my inner voice — it's the sound of cars zooming past my window.

Normally I can tune out the noises of the city. I have to. I live in the middle of an urban area, so at all moments of the day, I can close my eyes and listen to cars honking, brakes squealing, and airplanes flying overhead.

No matter how long I’ve called cities my home, the urban din still induces anxiety in me. It’s a claustrophobic reminder that I’m surrounded on all sides by concrete, cars, and buildings.

Sometimes, I need an escape.

Lately, I’ve been finding that escape in small pockets of nature: the veins of green space that run through my city, the elements of the natural world that persist amid the concrete, and the sights and sounds of living things that are often drowned out by city life.

Learning how to connect to nature while in a dense urban area has worked wonders on my mental health, and it probably could help your head, too: There’s tons of research on how nature is medicine for the soul.

Here are a few of my strategies for connecting to the natural world when you live in a city.

Images via iStock.

1. Take advantage of green spaces inside the city.

Your city probably has more public parks than you realize. The next time you have a free Saturday afternoon, check out your city’s Parks and Recreation website instead of binge-watching the third season of "Parks and Recreation" on Netflix (no shame, I do it too). If you really want to put some distance between yourself and urban life, check out a nature preserve or find a trail that leads away from busy roads. If you’re feeling more social, see if your city’s Parks department has volunteer days, so you can explore a green space while meeting friends.

2. Think smaller.

Sometimes, you can’t disappear into a peaceful island inside the city, but you can still find some peace in the outdoors wherever you go.

A 2017 study from the University of British Columbia looked at the effects of connecting with nature on a smaller scale: noticing a flower, watering a houseplant, watching the sunset. Researchers found that even these seemingly minor encounters made people feel happier and more connected.

So the next time you’re feeling stressed or upset, take a walk to visit your favorite tree. It may seem silly at first, but it works.

Image via iStock.

3. Get out of town.

I know, I know — this isn’t always an option, especially if your transportation options are limited. But if you can rent a car or take a bus out to some nearby campgrounds or a state or national park, you should do it.

Spending time immersed in nature can literally change the way your brain functions. If you can find a spot without cell service, even better.

4. Spend more time noticing.

When you walk to the subway station, how many types of trees do you pass? The birds you hear outside your window — are they all the same species singing the same song, or is there variation?

You may not always have the time to physically escape the city to find nature, but you can take a few moments every day to let nature find you. No matter where you are, you can sit and listen and watch. You don’t have to be an expert birdwatcher or a trained biologist to engage in this exercise. But if you lean into your curious side, you will find yourself wanting to know more about the family of doves who live on your block, or how to distinguish between a sycamore tree and a maple. The more you discover about your non-human neighbors, the more connected you will feel to them. And that’s a relationship worth nurturing.

So get out there and find your peace in some nature! Sit quietly, observe, and listen to what the outdoors has to say.

From Your Site Articles

2 scientists turned a human organ into an art project. Here are 11 stunning images.

Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards are scientists-turned-artists.

In their new project "Self Reflected," Dunn and Edwards used a new technique called micro-etching to illuminate one specific organ in the human body.

The pair developed the technique, which combines hand drawing, gilding, and photolithography along with data visualizations to create amazing art. It allows dynamic control of an image and its colors using reflective gold surfaces.

They took a slice of tissue of this mystery human organ and magnified it 22 times. And what they created was beyond incredible.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The kaleidoscopic vividness is surreal, but the sheer beauty of the images is only part of the story.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Each image looks wholly unique, but all the images are from a single human organ.

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Can you guess what organ it is? We'll give you a hint...

Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

If you zoom out a bit you'll see that...

Self-reflected in violets — the entire self reflected in micro-etching under violet and white light. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

...it's the brain!

Surprising, I know. My eyes still don't believe that this is a slice of the visual cortex.

The visual cortex, the region located at the back of the brain that processes visual information. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Or that this is a 22-times magnification of our brain stem.

Raw colorized micro-etching data from the reticular formation and brainstem. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

But that's the beautiful gilded truth.

The midbrain, an area that carries out diverse functions in reward, eye movement, hearing, attention, and movement. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

“Self Reflected was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity,” they wrote on their site.

The thalamus and basal ganglia, sorting senses, initiating movement, and making decisions. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

Combined, all the images in the series show only 500,000 neurons and circuits of the billions in the human brain. The images were hand-gilded with 1,750 sheets of 22-karat gold leaf.

The pons, a region involved in movement and implicated in consciousness. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The first version of "Self Reflected," which consists of 25 etched panels of the brain, is on permanent display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The micro-etching technique makes the appearance of the art completely dependent on lighting that can change the viewers’ experience each time they look at it.

The entire Self Reflected micro-etching under white light. Photo by Greg Dunn and Will Drinker.

The ornate beauty of these images offers much more than what's on its surface. They are a glimpse into the organ that sets us apart as a species, that allows us the ability to create and appreciate art like this.

What Dunn and Edwards have done with this project is more than science and more than art — they've examined the deepest areas of our mind and found beauty reflected back at them.

Watch the video below to learn more about the project:

Clarification 4/29/2017: The article was updated to clarify that this photo project shows about 500,000 neurons and circuits in the brain, but in total the brain contains millions of them.

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People are recreating famous works of art from home and some are seriously incredible - Upworthy ›

Heroes

The latest thinking on contact sports, concussions, and the risk to our youth.

True

In 2015, a Sports Illustrated article profiled the deaths of 11 high school football players.

Five of the deaths were due to severe blows to the head. And as recently as November 2016, a 15-year-old Texas football player died after suffering a head injury while playing football.

"There are about 1.3 million high school and 2.8 million youth football players in this country. That's more than 4 million children and teenagers playing football," Ralph Nader and Kenneth Reed wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed. "Compare that number with the 1,700 or so adults playing football in the NFL. Yet, the nation's focus, when it comes to concussions, is on the NFL. That needs to be flipped."

Image via iStock.

Nader and Reed make an excellent point about spotlighting the safety issues surrounding millions of young athletes. And their concerns about head injuries are echoed by parents across the country. To better protect our children playing football, it's crucial to have a better understanding of concussions.

A roundtable discussion at UCLA shed some light on the current state of concussion research and how we can better educate people on the risks.

Roman Phifer, a 15-year NFL veteran and three-time Super Bowl champion, sat down with Adriana Galvan, a professor and director of the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory at UCLA, and Dr. John DiFiori, chief of sports medicine at UCLA, for this informative talk.

Watch the full roundtable discussion right here:

One of the first things they discussed was what exactly a concussion is.

"Basically a direct or indirect blow to the head or neck that results in a sequence of symptoms and clinical findings that are characteristics of fogginess," explained DiFiori.

That definition is a long way from what Phifer experienced growing up. He recalled, "Back then, the protocol was, you know, you have a concussion ... tell me how many fingers you’re holding up or who’s the president or what the date was, then you’re good to go."

Dr. John DiFiori discusses the importance of being fully healed before returning to play. Screenshot via UCLA.

Considering football has the highest concussion rate among sports, it's important to understand how to address it. "Most concussions will resolve in about 10 days," said DiFiori. He added that this is true for almost 90% of cases.

This is especially significant since many kids return to play the same day that they get a concussion. One wrong hit could cause severe effects down the road or, even in some cases, lead to death.

Adriana Galvan gets insight into the sports angle of the issue. Screenshot via UCLA.

That's why Galvan stresses the importance of educating parents and young players on looking at things long term. "Adolescents are really primed to focus on the immediate, to focus on the reward, and that’s great in some contexts," she said. "But for them to really appreciate the potential dangers is important for them as well."

Some have called to eliminate youth football altogether, but this is a contentious idea.

Others are in favor of solutions that are less controversial and easier to implement. Limiting tackles in practice and getting rid of them completely for children below a certain age range could help reduce hits.

According to Practice Like Pros, 60% to 75% of head traumas occur during practice at the high school level. As a result, they suggest a time limit for full-contact practices and encourage players to report concussions right away. They also advocate for employing a full-time athletic trainer on every team, having an EMT on standby at every game, and supporting continuing scientific research. They'd even like to convert all youth leagues below ninth grade to flag football, a trend that has seen a meaningful rise.

Image via iStock.

Phifer stressed taking things a step further to make sure kids are playing properly. "You educate kids, you try to reduce the risk as much as possible," he said. "You tell them to keep [their] head up. You do all the other things that you can. You implement fines or penalties when kids are not doing it the right way."

What's key is taking action to make the sport as safe as possible.

Football is a meaningful sport for a lot of people, and Phifer talked about some of the game's positives beyond all the injuries. "The first thing that comes to mind is just being a part of something bigger than yourself," he said. "Having all these kids from different backgrounds, it doesn't matter about, you know, socioeconomic status. It doesn’t matter if you're rich or poor. We're all here together. Now you’re working for one common goal of trying to win and be successful and everyone's doing their part. So I think it really gives kids that development about teamwork and not being selfish."

Image via iStock.

Without question, there are countless Americans who love their football. But as the game continues to get bigger, we must also become better at taking care of players of all ages. By continuing to take action on that, it might be possible to accomplish what many athletes strive for in their careers — to change the game.