Brian Maurer is hoping to bring attention and awareness to the importance of mental health when he detailed his own battle this week. Maurer battled a series of injuries and ended up missing missing the last few weeks of the 2019 season before playing in the team’s bowl game on January 2.
On Friday, the Tennessee Vols QB took to Instagram and wrote out a detailed post about how he was going to commit suicide in January before receiving a phone call from his mother that day.
“On Wednesday January 22 , 2020 I planned to take my own life,” Maurer said on Instagram. “I thought I lost my battle with depression and that my pain had come to an end as I was going to do it I looked up and I said ‘god if this isn’t your plan for me please send me a sign.’”
“2 minutes later my mom called me with my baby nephew Jeremiah and she said she was just calling to say she loved me. I then knew that by ending my pain i would be causing so much more to the people who loved me.”
The 19-year-old says he has struggled with depression and anxiety since the seventh grade, when his father was sentenced to 25 years in prison and his mother and stepfather separated.
After moving in with his grandmother in the 9th grade, he said one of his best friends killed himself when he was a Junior in high school. He would then lose two more friends to gun violence the following year.
“I slipped even deeper into a black hole and I turned to everything else but seeking help,” Maurer wrote in the post.
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May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
“My goal was not to bring attention to myself, but to bring attention to mental health,” Maurer told ESPN. “It’s something a lot of people struggle with. And not only younger people, but all people. They battle it every day and keep it a secret. My thinking was that if a college athlete can come out and speak about how seeking help is the most important thing you can do, then maybe all those people out there struggling will reach out to somebody and know that there is always hope.”
“I didn’t tell anybody about what I was going through, because you’re embarrassed,” Maurer told ESPN. “But everybody at the University of Tennessee has been great, and Coach Weinke has been my rock. I’m excited to better myself. And most of all, to let others know who are going through the same thing that they’re not alone.”
Maurer has received nothing but outpouring of love from the college football community since his post went viral.
