NYT: Olympic Cyclist Kelly Catlin Seemed Destined for Glory. Why Did She Kill Herself?

[Sylvia]

@Garden Kitty mentioned Kelly Catlin's suicide in this thread in the Other Sports forum (link: https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/6-pro-cyclists-talk-about-depression.105449/ ) but I thought Juliet Macur's front-page article in the New York Times today (headline: Olympic Athlete. Brilliant Mind. ‘Never at Peace.’) was worth its own thread in OTBT - this is the online version: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/sports/kelly-catlin-death.html

Excerpts:

WABASHA, Minn. — In the weeks before the Olympic cyclist Kelly Catlin killed herself, she felt her mind slipping.
She could not focus on her schoolwork at Stanford, where she was a first-year graduate student in computational mathematics. In an email she sent to her family, a coach and a friend in January, she said her thoughts were “never-ending spinning, spinning, spinning” as if they were “never at rest, never at peace.”
She wrote that she cried about it, and that made her feel even worse. For years, Catlin, 23, was someone who took pride in holding back tears. ... <snip> ...
She wrote that she was scared of dying.
“What is it like to no longer have a mind?” she wrote in January, just days before a first suicide attempt. She answered the question.
“It is unimaginable,” she wrote. “Terrifying.”

Catlin’s father, who is a pathologist, blames her suicide on a combination of factors, including her success-at-all-costs personality, overtraining, stress, and physical injuries from a January suicide attempt about a month before she was found dead in her dorm. On both occasions, she inhaled noxious gas.
But the breaking point, he and other family members believe, was a concussion she sustained during a training ride on Jan. 5. They have donated her brain to researchers to find out if the head injury contributed to her behavior changes.
Regardless of the results, nothing can give the family a definitive answer. Suicide is much more complicated than lab results can reveal and multiple factors, like destabilizing life events, brain chemistry and persistent mental struggles, almost always come into play.

 

[Garden Kitty]

Such a sad story and loss to the cycling community. I commend her family for talking about the issues, including potential long term impacts from TBI, and encouraging others to seek help. So many elite athletes fear being seen as "weak" as it could hurt their careers, but the impacts from ignoring problems can be far greater.

 

[AxelAnnie]

What a tragedy. I am a little perplexed that if she tried to kill herself in January she was not receiving in-patient therapy. I am so sorry for the family.

 

[clairecloutier]

So sad. TBH, it sounds like her problems started long before the concussion ....

 

[Sarah]

So sad. There has to be multiple factors involved, but you have to wonder if that concussion was her first...

Yet Catlin continued to complain to her parents of headaches, sensitivity to light and trouble sleeping. And this was coming months after a fall in October that left her with a broken arm and weakened interest in the national team.

 

[MacMadame]

Having had post-concussion syndrome for over 4 years, I will say that you absolutely can't downplay how much a concusion changes you and your life. It's very disconcerting to go from having an excellent memory, well above average, to not being able to remember the names of simple everyday things. Plus having a headache every day and not being able to workout or do other things that are essential to your self-image (or doing them anyway and delaying your recovery) is very soul-damaging.

I'm sure her personality and personal code didn't help, but she could have been a perfectionist for the rest of her life and not have thoughts of suicide.

 

[judiz]

What a tragedy. I am a little perplexed that if she tried to kill herself in January she was not receiving in-patient therapy. I am so sorry for the family.

As an adult she could not be forced into treatment unless she was declared a danger to herself or others and I guess no one pursued that option. She also considered asking for help as a sign of weakness.

 

[clairecloutier]

Having had post-concussion syndrome for over 4 years, I will say that you absolutely can't downplay how much a concusion changes you and your life.

I am sure you are right about the concussion aspect.

But several other things in that profile were pretty concerning. Vowing in 3rd grade never to love or have a significant other. Screaming for hours because she couldn't do elementary school math. Not wanting to be hugged by anyone. It just sounded to me like there was something amiss before the concussion.

 

[AxelAnnie]

As an adult she could not be forced into treatment unless she was declared a danger to herself or others and I guess no one pursued that option. She also considered asking for help as a sign of weakness.

True. But the first suicide attempt gets you a free 5150 hold in the psych ward.

 

[Prancer]

True. But the first suicide attempt gets you a free 5150 hold in the psych ward.

Right out of the article: After her first suicide attempt, Catlin spent about a week in a hospital psychiatric ward.

That was in January. A 5150 hold is good for three days, so it would have expired long before March 8.

 

[aliceanne]

So sad. TBH, it sounds like her problems started long before the concussion ....

Yes, I think her family is in denial. She seems to have been extremely anti-social and obsessive-compulsive from an early age. I think because she was so musically, athletically, and academically successful everyone accepted it. Her unwillingness to interact on any terms but her own was a sign that she couldn't handle circumstances beyond her control.

I don't blame them though, I don't know what they could have done to change things.

 

[AxelAnnie]

Right out of the article: After her first suicide attempt, Catlin spent about a week in a hospital psychiatric ward.

That was in January. A 5150 hold is good for three days, so it would have expired long before March 8.

Thanks. I missed that.

Right out of the article: After her first suicide attempt, Catlin spent about a week in a hospital psychiatric ward.

That was in January. A 5150 hold is good for three days, so it would have expired long before March 8.

I have been reading through news articles. A 5150 hold is different than spending a week in a hospital psych ward.
Very different rules and restrictions. (Unfortunately I know way too much about this as my grand-daughter, Anna, as in AxelAnnie has been through all of it).

I agree with whomever said that the parents are in denial. But I don't know where else they would be. If they thought there were signs, and did not get her whatever help she needed (assuming they could - but when you are a parent you tend to think you have some super powers) it would be way too much to hold.

Suicide is a real sucker!

 

[judiz]

The entire mental health system needs to be revamped. The horror stories I could share of my husband’s five psychiatric hospitalizations. He killed himself awaiting a bed to open for hospitalization six.

 

[Japanfan]

The entire mental health system needs to be revamped. The horror stories I could share of my husband’s five psychiatric hospitalizations. He killed himself awaiting a bed to open for hospitalization six.

I'm so sorry judiz. Is there no emerg Psych facilities where you live?

 

[once_upon]

I'm so sorry judiz. Is there no emerg Psych facilities where you live?

Emergency psych facilities are extremely overtaxed and usually buy you 24 hours care IF you are an immediate threat to yourself or someone else. Judiz husband had been receiving care and waiting for inpatient care.
As she said the whole mental health system needs an overhaul and stigma lifted from mental health diseases.

 

[Japanfan]

Emergency psych facilities are extremely overtaxed and usually buy you 24 hours care IF you are an immediate threat to yourself or someone else. Judiz husband had been receiving care and waiting for inpatient care.
As she said the whole mental health system needs an overhaul and stigma lifted from mental health diseases.

My very limited (thankfully) experience of people needing pysch care in Canada is that it has been available as needed. That is, those people have been admitted due to being in a state of crisis and in need of care - and to hospital psych wards, not emergency wards.

Being a danger to oneself or others is reason for a person to be committed to hospital. Committed, which is different from admitted.

Sorry to be reminded of your husband's situation, Judiz.

 

[MacMadame]

It's pretty horrible here in the US.

One of my kids had issues and we couldn't find a hospitalization program for younger people (i.e., adolescents) because they had all closed. We just had to find even one that was open at all. And then we sat in the waiting room for hours waiting for him to be admitted because he wasn't raving and had his parents with him so all the other patients were a higher priority. Then, while he was there, we found out that this place was closing the very next month. This left very few places for in-patient care covered by insurance.

 

[judiz]

Re: Emergency Psychiatric Facilities In New Jersey you can only be admitted to a psychiatric hospital from the emergency room and heart attacks, strokes and car accidents are treated ahead of psychiatric plus they do not have any mental health doctors on call. You cannot be admitted unless you are seen by a psychiatrist and then you
have to wait for them. The last time my husband was admitted to a New Jersey psychiatric hospital was after sitting in the ER for 8 hours.

Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan has a psychiatric ER. Both times I took my husband there he spent between 12 to 24 hours in the ER waiting for a bed to open upstairs on the psychiatric ward.

 

[KCC]

@judiz, same with my family member (FM). Took 8-9 hours to get blood labs and an EKG before getting admitted to a short term (5-8 day) facility.

The facility just opened 2 months ago, so it looks nicer than it operates. Dozens of people asking how you are doing and making the same notes on a clip board for their file, but not any offering counseling or help beyond keeping everyone "safe" from themselves. Many basic procedures need to be improved. For instance, the staff wakes patients up with their every-30-minute lights-on bed checks, they have mixed up meds (that FM caught before it was too late), they forgot to assign a case worker to FM making it harder to get discharged, and they herd everyone from room to room as a group (difficult for any introvert).

The best part about going through these very inefficient processes is that FM has connected with a psychiatrist for after this stay. It is the only way to get an appointment with a decent psychiatrist around here. Everyone else has to use their primary care physician. (A previous "psychiatrist who is also a chiropractor" told FM to go out and get drunk with friends.)

I can't think of a more inefficient process to get someone help. I guess we should be glad that after all this, we have a continuing care plan - not everyone is that fortunate. At least until the next crisis comes along.

 

[Sylvia]

(Saw that Phil Hersh tweeted a link to this Washington Post article so I've revived this thread.)

Driven to the end
Olympic cyclist Kelly Catlin could do it all. Until it all became too much.
By Kent Babb (July 29): https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/07/29/kelly-catlin-death-cyclist/
Excerpts:

“The very characteristics that made you successful will be self-destructive,” Mark says he has realized, though he prefers to keep himself busy than think too deeply about it, and indeed as much as his daughter was an outlier in life, she was part of a trend in death.

Mark is a retired medical pathologist, and he has learned these past few months that young people in the United States — and, in particular, young women and girls — are killing themselves at a rate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a national health crisis.

The family donated Kelly’s brain to Boston University’s CTE Center, which in the past two years has seen an uptick in the brains of women. Mark studied his daughter’s medical records and requested the Olympic Training Center’s post-concussion protocol. A lawyer had to talk him out of suing Stanford, which he said wouldn’t offer treatment for Kelly because she wasn’t a varsity athlete. (The Stanford spokesman said the school’s follow-up is the same for athletes and non-athletes.)
“You create a barrier in your mind,” Mark says, “and the barrier is between normal activities and thoughts about Kelly.”
... Eventually they’d conclude there was something about Kelly they both admired and feared, and it’s what pushed her to the top and her bottom: Once she made up her mind on something — anything — there could be no changing it.
“To be so obsessed with something,” Mark says, “that you can’t give it up.”