Thats fair enough. Professional athletes live a more complicated life. Half of sports players even millionaires are flat BROKE after after retirement. I'm sure thats several times more a likelihood than the average person. Then there's excessive drugs and alcohol and all kinds of exotic substances in the body for physical training. Then athletes tend to be pretty strong minded and bullheaded "Don't take sh**" types. . There's even the approach of playing THROUGH injury. They can apply that to life. They'll probably think they're on top of the life game when theyre NOT Something about them just "aint right" in general. Though you said there's basically NO DIRECT effect of brain illness to any increased rate of suicide. Putting almost the FULL brunt of the causation on lifestyle choices and environmental factors. I do think the "6x more likely" might be some exaggeration. Like its turning football players into suicide machines. But the head injuries just HAVE to trigger some of those "underlying" effects more. The amount of that is debatable, but its gotta be more than ZERO.
Very much aware some things can seem counter-intuitive. I don't think life and nature has to be "FAIR" and make rational sense, so that pieces always fit together to have understanding the way we want it. It could very well be that head trauma makes people be LESS suicidal. Its just when you put the available data together, tackle football be messing fools heads up. Worse than they went in. I'll continue to watch football though with a more guarded interest. I won't watch it the same way. Though anything short of a boycott, its not like the league will dissolve overnight. (NO rookies entering the league have been phased by the concussion reports, all them gladly accepted their NFL invites) So just keep the interesting going feeding the football beast, while hedging in other forms of entertainment. Until it gradually wears off.
One of my favorite commercials when I was a kid. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HieM90Rej1s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Here's a video of junior Seau's mother weeps over her son death. A parent should never have to bury their child. EDIT* F***ing CBS disabling the video but they put a commercial on it so they can get all the views to themselves to make money off of youtube. Here's the link to it ----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxGEGTt9yZQ&feature=share <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TxGEGTt9yZQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In case you've never read it, here is Malcom Gladwell's excellent article in the New Yorker on football and brain damage. It's a really good read.