Former Washington Redskins quarterback Mark Rypien, the MVP of Super Bowl XXVI, says he once tried to commit suicide -- the result of mental health issues stemming from his football days.
Rypien detailed his problems for Spokane TV station KHQ and The Spokesman-Review, hoping it leads to more awareness of problems from playing football.
"I suffer from a complex stew of mental health conditions," Rypien told KHQ-TV. "Dark places, depression, anxiety, addictions, poor choices, poor decisions, brought about from dozens of concussions and thousands of subconcussive injuries from playing this sport."
Rypien told the outlets, in separate interviews, that he was speaking out after the January suicide of Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski and the death earlier this month of Coeur d'Alene (Idaho) High School principal Troy Schueller from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.