I haven’t been comfortable with many outlets linking Junior Seau’s suicide to the concussions that he suffered playing football.

Yes, it certainly can be a plausible reason. However, I think the discussion overlooks the bigger reason: Depression.

You don’t need to be a football player to suffer from depression. The condition has affected my family, and I’m betting it has impacted somebody who is close to you.

Detroit News columnist Chris McCoskey wrote about his battles with depression Tuesday. I knew Chris back in the early 90s when I covered college football for the Chicago Tribune and he was on the Michigan beat. Nice guy, always seemed upbeat.

Little did I know that he was going through personal turmoil. He writes:

I was diagnosed in 1991 and spent a year or longer playing the pharmacology  game, but after countless changes in drug and dosage, I threw the pills away.  All those things ever did was give me constipation and dry mouth. Nothing like a  little constipation and dry mouth to heal a person’s aching soul.

My life was falling apart. My first marriage was failing. My  ever-understanding employer at the time found out what I was struggling with and  terminated my employment. I could have fought that and won, but it would’ve cost  too much and ultimately killed my career.

Plus, I had a bigger, more important fight on my hands.

McCoskey writes about an episode where he considered suicide while driving in a car. He also details his on-going struggles.

More importantly, McCoskey tries to explain about a condition few people truly understand. He writes.

People with depression can’t always just “turn that frown upside down.” They  can’t always just suck it up. It’s a dark, overwhelming place sometimes. And a  lot of us suffer alone because we are ashamed. We feel stupid. How can a person  be incapable of having fun? Any moron knows how to have a good time.

It’s almost impossible to talk about it to regular people (bosses, spouses,  friends). They can’t fathom how somebody in good physical health, with a good  job, with kids who love them, who seems relatively normal on the outside, can be  terminally unhappy.

And when you try to explain it, you come off sounding so pathetic, so weak  and whiney, even to yourself — it’s just easier, though infinitely more harmful,  to suffer in silence.

Junior Seau wasn’t sad when he pointed that gun to his chest. He wasn’t being  a coward. He wasn’t being selfish. He was sick.

Congratulations to Chris for having the courage to speak out. This is an important story. Read it and then pass it on.