EUGENE — Zach Okun arrived home enraged, and amid a "full-blown meltdown" he shared with horrified roommates what he had long held inside.
Just kill me, he screamed.
Since he arrived at the University of Oregon two years earlier, the lineman hadn’t said a word about his anxiety, depression or thoughts of suicide. Worried that revealing his turmoil would be seen as admitting a weakness, he stayed silent.
“I thought it was the tough thing to do,” Okun said. “My biggest mistake was that I didn’t ask for help. I kept internalizing things, until it came out.