Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is presented by The Mac Parkman Foundation
The mission of this show and the foundation is To serve as a source of information, resources, and communications to the community of parents, coaches/Athletic trainers, medical staff, and athletes that are affected by sports-related concussions and to raise awareness of the long-term implications of concussive and sub-concussive trauma to our children.
Broken Brains will also explore how Concussive Trauma impacts our Service Members and Veterans.
Join us every week as Bruce interviews leaders and experts in various Medical fields, as well as survivors of Concussive trauma.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
#1 What happened to Mac?
What if the signs of severe mental illness were hidden in plain sight? On this heart-wrenching episode of Broken Brains, producer Deny Caballero and I, Bruce Parkman, share the painful story of my son Mac's struggle with schizophrenia and depression—a battle that remained invisible until it was too late. We recount the tragic events of September 24, 2020, when Mac ended his life at Pulpit Rock, and reflect on the heartbreaking missed cues that could have alerted us to his suffering. Our conversation underscores the urgent need to recognize and address mental health issues among those we hold dear.
Navigating the aftermath of Mac's death was a journey through shock, disbelief, and an overwhelming search for answers. This episode takes you through the grueling process of planning his funeral, dealing with suspicions of foul play, and the emotional toll on our family. The raw and candid anecdotes reveal how our family struggled with grief, substance abuse, and the relentless pursuit of justice. It's a glimpse into the devastating impact of such a loss on family dynamics and the painful intersection of investigation and grief.
Driven by a need to understand Mac's condition, I turned to organizations like StopCT.org and the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Interactions with Dr. Ann McKee, a leading CTE researcher, unveiled the connections between brain injuries from contact sports and severe mental health issues. This newfound knowledge fueled my determination to raise awareness, leading to the creation of a book and a foundation dedicated to protecting future generations. Join us as we highlight the critical need for reform in youth sports and underscore the long-term consequences of contact sports on developing brains.
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welcome to the broken brains podcast. I am the producer, denny caballero, and today with me is the host, bruce parkman. Bruce, thank you for being here, man. I'm excited to be part of this journey denny, I'll tell you what man.
Speaker 2:We tried this once and we never had a producer, so I like somebody kicking me in the butt. Tell me what to do. I need a drill sergeant man, so can't, can't. Thank you enough for helping us out, man, absolutely man. It's going to be an awesome series, man, best in America, that's right, it's just like being back on a team man.
Speaker 1:You just need to have somebody there with you. You need that junior and senior bond. So we'll make it happen. But, Bruce, I want to start off with by saying that what you are doing, what you and your organization are doing, is nothing short than amazing work and, like many of us that start these endeavors that are passion driven and purpose driven, sadly there's a story of loss and tragedy that is the catalyst. So today I want to ask you, Bruce, what exactly happened to Mac?
Speaker 2:September 24th 2020, covid was raging and it was a tough time for everybody. My company wasn't doing well. I was spending all day trying to fix it. Then, at night, I got my couch here. I used to sit on one side of it. My son sat on the other. He had these headphones on. He was a game man, man, apex, a whole nine yards. I'd just sit next to him because it was my time. I practiced my bagpipes. We did that all through COVID man.
Speaker 2:Then, for some reason, he wasn't going to play football. I was like good, because you joined the Army, I don't want you to get here. They were like oh, we're going to do it in the spring. I'm like that's stupid. Well, they said, no, we're going to have a fall league.
Speaker 2:And what I did not know at that time is my son had been suffering with severe mental illness, schizophrenia and depression for years. Just eating it, just a good boy, man, soldier or not, I didn't know. I mean, looking back, the only sign of mental illness that we could now diagnose is apathy. He didn't want to do anything and I thought, all right, he's getting older, he's getting ready to join the Army. Man, I'm like all right, but he never got in trouble. He never acted out like these other kids. He never gave us a sign and even if he did, bro, we wouldn't know what to do. I just thought, no, I got an old Sergeant major on him and you know I wouldn't have helped him at all, you know. So he came up to me, I was in my office, and he goes hey dad, I'm going to go to football practice. And he wasn't going to football practice, bro. I said all right, son, and I came up and gave him a big hug. He was a big kid man, he's taller than me. He used to call me shrimp. I'm like all right. And I said give me some cheek. I always got some cheek Gave him a kiss, hugged him and I said hey, man, make good decisions, he goes. I want that. Never saw him again, bro.
Speaker 2:He went to the football field, dropped off his kit bag. On the way to the football field he changed, dropped off his kit bag and five minutes away it is a place called Pulpit Rock. It's a big cliff that overlooks Colorado Springs, and we never found any indication on his phone that he was planning suicide. We found four notes saying that I want to die. And after he left. Why Pulpit Rock?
Speaker 2:What we know now is that when you're impulsive and you made these decisions, when you go, you're going, and he must have looked at Rock and said, yep, and he parked his truck. We found it that evening. He walked 45 minutes up that cliff this is how resolved he was to leave and at the top of that cliff he did a Snapchat video. A Snapchat video and he's like I can't do this, no more, I'm done, I've been depressed, I've been schizophrenic and I'm done. And then, when he said I'm done, he got happy he goes, I'm done. And then he because he's such a good boy, he's like I apologize to anybody I've ever lied to, because I used to ask him you know just that, hey, you okay, everything going fine, anything you want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Then I'd give my dad lectures and I'd look at him. You know what, dad? He goes, yeah, but never. You know you alright. Yeah, he didn't know how to tell the coach he didn't want to play. He loved his coach. He didn't know how to tell the team he wanted to play. He loved his boy, he his buddies. You know, yeah, they didn't know how to tell me, you know. You know we're, we're tight, you know.
Speaker 2:And and um, he posted that message on snapchat and he ran, ran off that cliff because he had a health care app on. He had. He took 39 steps in 7.2 seconds and launched himself off that cliff. Well, that, of course. I'm sitting at my desk. I I don't know anything. My daughter calls up screaming Mac's going to hurt himself. I'm like, what are you talking about? I just saw him, man, an hour ago. He goes, you know he's going to hurt himself. I'm like what he says? He's on Pulpit Rock. Well, pulpit Rock was. I used to run there from our house. It was a great place to run and I ran there all the time hating that place after he left until we moved. But so I I flew out of there and and his phone was still generating a ping at an address.
Speaker 2:So I came flying up in this neighborhood, everybody's freaking out. I mean, I was screaming, I must have been doing 60 miles an hour hit the brakes, skid over, got out, I got a gun. I don't know who's fucking with my son pardon my French, sorry, I gotta get used to that and um, I came out, dude, ready to deal, and this dude comes out. I'm like where's my boy? Where's my boy? And I'm just losing it. I wasn't wearing any socks, I just put on some shoes. I said where's my boy? He goes what are you talking about? And I go, dude, my son's here, my son's here, and I'm running around. You know, I've got a gun.
Speaker 2:I'm like and, and anyways, uh, then they said no, the the pings moved back to around pulpit rock. So I parked and I ran through the backwoods because I was figuring everybody was on the front of the rock, because that's where you parked. I came into the back because I thought he might have been, you know, trying to get away there. At no time did I think he was going to do what he. You know, when he said he was done, cause we had no indication, he just said I'm done, and um. So I ran all over the place, I ran the cuts and by that time the entire football team was there, the wrestling team was there. We had 150 people on that rock, never found.
Speaker 2:So this time now we found his shoes. And by this time, you know, it's getting later on in the evening. You know, we're looking, we're running all over the place and that ping kept moving. So we kept chasing that ping. Meanwhile we had a girl back at the house. She found a bunch of the football players down in Mac's room sniffing around and trying to rip his room apart. She kicked them all out.
Speaker 2:We didn't know what that was at the time, but we stayed out there. Man, we stayed out there. We were in apartment complexes anywhere around. We kept spreading out the search. We were out. Then, finally, I knew the sheriff from Woodland Park. We're like we got to get some dogs out. By that time they wouldn't put the dogs out. It was nighttime. He know, he says Bruce, you got to call, you know, nmic, the National Missing Child Center, or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I didn't want to do it. I'm like I, I, I, it's like man, I don't want to do this. But I did. And I told my wife. I said all right, you stay here with Donna and I'm going to head out. I went back out, dude, and we were out until 4.30 in the morning, man tearing things up, man, like I said, we're all over the place. And I was running through it. I'm screaming. I was like Mac, it's okay, whatever it is, we're going to fix it. We'll move to Florida. You don't have to play football. I just didn't know. I mean, I'm just screaming, whatever.
Speaker 2:So 5, 30 morning, 4, 5, 30 morning, I come home and I get 30 minutes of sleep. I'm back out there. I told my wife. I said I'm bringing my boy home, I'm coming to get, I'm gonna get him, I'm fine, he's out there because it was getting cold that night, like, all right, he doesn't have any sneakers, how far can he run, right? Yeah, then we started getting signs that people saw him. So go back out there. Sun's coming up.
Speaker 2:I'm up on pulpit rock, I got my binos, I'm looking, um, didn't know at the time, but my boy was right underneath me and I didn't see him. I never looked down. I'm looking out right and um. So I got off the rock and I saw about a mile ahead some guy with a white shirt, black pants, like him. Like I'm fucking gone, man, it's him.
Speaker 2:You know, because you're when you're in the mode, man, you're praying right and I, before I left the rock, this lady came up and, um, she goes. What do you? I said, hey, have you seen the boy? Have you seen the boy? We're asking anybody, have you seen what she goes? What do you? So my son got lost last night. We can't find him. He seems gonna hurt himself. And she says can I say a prayer please? And we had this. She said this amazing period. I put the rock, the sun's coming up, we're holding hands in a circle and I'm like, thank you so much. And I'm gone.
Speaker 2:So I got my pistol. I'm literally clearing. Now I'm down by the railroad tracks. There's all these homeless camps. I'm going in there, got my pistol. I don't have it out in the back of my pants. I'm like have you seen my boy? Have you seen my boy? These homeless guys and girls are like, they're heartbroken.
Speaker 2:We did prayer circles in homeless camps and I said, yes, can we say a prayer? We hope you find them. And I just met amazing humanity that day and and um, and then I I got word hey, hey, bruce, you need to come back. You know the news is here. Well, they did, they knew. But well, at that time they had found them. So I went back and, um, I got in my car and this guy come up. He was pretending to be my friend at the time, I didn't know it, but he's like hey, they found Mac. And I said, well, is he okay? And he shook his head and I said is he gone? He goes, yeah. And he caught me. I had to walk away and I had that gun. You know, I'm like, you know.
Speaker 2:They stopped thinking it's all your fault, you know, maybe I should just go join them, you know. And I headed out and I looked over and I saw my wife and my daughters, you know, crying and holding on to each other. I'm like man, I can't leave them dude. So I cleared the pistol and put it in my pants. I didn't want the cops, he would have gone anyway. He went over there and hugged on him and I'm like, I'm just screaming. I didn't know, I don't know, I don't know, I didn't know, I didn't know and they wouldn't let us go see him. So I knew it was pretty bad.
Speaker 2:What had happened is, when he jumped, he landed in like this crevice. There's these big boulders at the bottom because the cliff's been deteriorating over years. God had put him in this crevice where nobody was going to find him, because they had got the dogs up. My wife raised enough hell to get those dogs up. It was such a mess.
Speaker 2:What it does to a family is trying to stay together and now you've got to deal with all this other stuff. Not only why is he gone, why is my son not here, but you've got to plan funeral services, you've got to plan cremation and all this stuff that you just don't want to deal with. Man, and of course we all started drinking. You know it was's, you know bring the way and it's may amass the pain. And we had all these meetings and meanwhile I've got the cops on this cause. It's a homicide, right Until it gets, you know, declared, until the autopsy report comes back.
Speaker 2:So I'm talking to this cop and what he don't know is that I deal with data. I've got, oh yeah, baddest data people in this country and I had them on it. They're using ad tech data. They're tracking phones. I'm giving stuff to the police. They're like, where are you getting this? I'm like, bro, this is my job. They're like, damn man, I said you need to check out this teacher. We've got this phone number up here and, damn man, I'm going nuts, man, because somebody hurt my kid and I'm hurting somebody. I'm, I'm gonna hurt somebody back.
Speaker 2:And so you know that whole week was the police officers trying to find was there something in in the family? Right, that, yeah, you know, because we're thinking pornography, say you know, they don't know, and and you know, and he's like dude. You know I have to list this as a suicide. I can't find anything right now, but it will be open as a homicide until the autopsy report comes back. So why am I here still today? It's because that Thursday we were getting ready to bury Mac on set and we had the service. You know, we didn't know where, but we were going to have them cremated and my wife had a friend whose father was one of the top forensic pathologists in America and her daughter called him. He says I want to talk to Mr Parkman. So we have two daughters, one's a nurse, a nursing practitioner, one's a lawyer. So I said, hey, lawyer, lawyer, girl, you're in the car with her.
Speaker 1:I want you on this.
Speaker 2:So, warrior girl, you're in the car, I want you on this. So she gets in there with her best friend two of the smartest chicks in america, right? So I'm like, all right, man, I got my legal team here, man oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So we start talking. He says tell me about. I said, well, you know, here's what happened. He goes what are you doing with the body? I said, well, we're going to cremate him. He goes why are you doing that? I'm like, what are you goes? Sir, if there's any coercion and we find this out, how are we going to look at the body? How are you going to make sure that everything was covered? I'm like, all right, we're not going to cremate the body. That decision right there, because that gentleman was one of the reasons I'm still on this earth.
Speaker 2:You know, flash forward, we get through the service. Then my wife starts. You know she relapsed and um and um, after you know, 15 successful years of being sober, and she tries to be with my boy. You know she's just doing what we all do missing him. Yeah, so she had to. You know, go into, uh, you know, go into therapy and and and go away for quite a long time to. You know, to put yourself back together, man, because this is soul-wrenching dude. Yeah, and it left me alone. And then, just before the service, mac's best friend, ex-best friend came up and he used to live with us. He used to come over to our house all the time him, Mac and Nathan. And when them kids were at the house, dude, it was just rock and roll man. They would be up there. All you could hear is thumping. They would be wrestling, laughing, playing video games until like 4 in the morning. I didn't know it at the time.
Speaker 1:Stepbrothers in real life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're all right. And when I used to make them R you know you'd have the mermite. There. You'd get a piece of bread, get a scoop of eggs, sausage patties, another piece of bread.
Speaker 2:And that's why I used to make them army sandwiches before we'd go to church every day after I'd get the entire kids up. So Parker shows up and he's looking like crap man, he's like 120 pounds. So I brought him into the garage and I smacked him around a little bit. I so I brought him in the garage and I, you know, smacked him around a little bit. I'm like dude, what's wrong with you? He turns out he's he's about two weeks enjoying my son. He's got a bad relationship and I, just, I just something just felt in my mind I gotta talk to this kid, yeah. So I went and found it. I said, parker, what's going on? He goes, mr parkman, and uh, I said get in the car. And he didn't want to. He was chippingipping tires, like he'd throw the tires and these things covered in black. All you could see was his eyes like big white eyeballs. And I said, just get in the car, leather cleans and we start talking and he goes.
Speaker 2:Mr Parker, I've got to tell you I bought some dope from Hack. I go dope. He goes, yeah, he goes. He's been asking a long time and I wouldn't do it because I knew you killed me, but he was so, so upset. I only did it once. It was right before he left and I swear it was. It was. I got it from a pharmacy, I mean a dope shop, and it's all clean. I swear, I swear, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And I said well, did you talk to him?
Speaker 2:And then I found out that Parker was not allowed to talk to my son because of some dope related incident about two and a half two years ago at our ski house. But they loved each other so much and Mac had a truck, so they were, they were, they were picking up the whole time. Right, and he goes. No, we've been, we saw each other a lot and and and. But he didn't tell me till right before he left that he was in a lot of pain. I was like, what did he tell you? And he just wasn't doing good and I said well, what did you tell him? He said I told him to go tell somebody. And here's what my son this is what it's all about, my boy goes and he told Mac. He says you got to tell somebody, mac, and he looked down and he goes. I don't want to let anybody down, and that's the kind of boy I raised. I mean not because I'm that kind of guy, I'm not. That's the kind of boy I raised. I mean not because I'm that kind of guy, I'm not. I mean how that boy ended up being a monster. Just honorable, young, committed, just a great kid he was. I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Probably my wife had nothing to do with me and so I said hey, man, you want to shot the title? He goes what are you talking about? I said hey, you look pretty messed up, man, you're not going to make it if you don't do something. He says what do you want me to do? So you're going to get rid of that girlfriend. That's a mess. You can get out of your lease. You're going to live with me? He goes I want that. I said all right, that's what we did. So meanwhile I got him over there.
Speaker 2:I'm alone, and the autopsy report comes in and we get on the phone with this autopsy guy. And this is how things line up when God wants something to happen. So the autopsy, the coroner, gets on the phone. He says I'm so sorry, mr Parkman, this is a suicide. I said really, he goes. Yeah, I said can you answer me a question? He's like what's that? I said you tell me why my boy, who is loved so deeply that never knew any of the emotional, physical, sexual stress trauma that I had, that was raised in a Christian household, that went to a Christian private school. That you know. Not that he had the world by the tail, but he went skiing every year. He went to the beach every summer and he lived. He's been with me all over the world. Why is he not here? And again, he asked me. He said one thing that got me to this chair. He's like did he play contact sports? And I said oh hell, yeah, what do you think? Yeah, he played. When did he start? Six years old he started wrestling. He's played rugby. He's played hockey, he's played soccer. He's a wrestling captain this year. He's the blindside guy on the football team and he goes well.
Speaker 2:I tried to start a CTE exam. I said what's CTE? He goes that football disease. I'm like what? So he says you might want to check into it. He said but unfortunately it's a suicide. And I said all right, what about the toxicology reports? Guess what? My son was stone cold sober when he ran off that cliff. Now he says we can tell that he had been using marijuana, but it was very lightly. But that day because they can tell in the bloodstream if it's active he said your son ran off that cliff sober.
Speaker 2:And I'm like what have I done that would make a kid run off a cliff sober? You know, I'm like, you know, where do I? How do it's all about this time, man. This is all about me. I got to own this. I got to own, I got to do something and I don't really want to be here right now. I mean, you know, my wife's gone and I'm all by myself wrestling with all this crap and I said, well, I got to keep moving. Why is he not here?
Speaker 2:So I called up an organization called StopCTorg, karen Kinzel, who's one of the. I call her mom. Now she answers the phone. She called me back in five minutes. She goes tell me about your boy and I told her she goes. My God, she goes. He never had a chance. I go from what she goes. These contact sports hurt these kids' brains and she goes. I lost my son and she goes. You need to talk to Concussion Legacy Foundation and call them up. Call the BU. Bu calls back. We do some. They talk to me on the phone. Boston University owns the Unite Brain Bank, where all the NFL players are at, and they go.
Speaker 2:Hey, mr Parkman, they call me back the next day. Hey, you know we're very, very sorry. And I said about what they go well, your son would have been a great donation, but you know, obviously he's buried. He's been three months, you know. And I said, oh no, no, I still got the body, because, remember when I told them we kept the body on ice just waiting for all this information, they go what I go? Yeah, man, they go three months later, I go. No, they said, give us the funeral home name and the coroner's name. And I gave them that. They called me back the next day. They go. We cannot believe. This has never happened. You're going to be able to make a full donation. Well, bam, mac goes up there. Now we have to wait nine months for them to do the CTE assessment, or almost a year. So this is September now. We didn't get it until September of the next year.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to. I'm not even putting my life back together, I don't care. Thank God I've got a great Green Beret COO. He's running the company. My stepson, he's like all right. He's like I want to be an army ranger. I'm like, all right, buddy, let's do this. And so, bam, he's on it, I'm doing, you know, 12 mile rucksack marches, you know, I mean, we're doing, we're, we're crushing it, bro Crushing, starting to live again, yeah, so, uh, he's keeping me alive, he's giving me a kid. I'm going to fix this kid, you know, and, and he was, uh, you know, and, and, and he, he did, I kind of, we kind of saved each other.
Speaker 2:So that was you know, then I, then I we had we closed down the house, moved everything out here to Florida and, you know, drove two days in a in a truck with all this crap. And you know, I'm trying to, my buddies run the company. And then, um, so we keep going. And then I said, you know what, I, I'm not waiting for this report, I'm going to start reading, I want to know. So I started researching. I bought every book, I got every book over there on schizophrenia, mental illness, big medical tones, and every night I would read, read, read, and then I'd read research papers. And then, you know, and I read, man, man, I read for like six months. So by the time I, uh, the, the, the cte exam was about ready. Um, I was already about five months into writing this book that I had to write, and so I was already heavily researched in this stuff and I came to the conclusion I was. I was reading this, I'm like real quick.
Speaker 1:What's the name?
Speaker 2:of that book, bruce. So it's a youth contact sports and broken brains. Um, it's available for free. We give it away, we don't. I don't make any money off this book. I mean, people sometimes buy it off Amazon if they want to help. I don't care. I got a stack of my. I put them in gyms. I put them all over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to highlight just the the difference in approaching problems as a green beret and a father. Data that we are going to crush through data to get answers, to get information about the enemy. That's exactly what you did. You didn't wait for somebody else, you started finding the answers yourself, and that's I mean that. That is a testament to who you are, bruce I appreciate, denny, but that's the issue.
Speaker 2:There were no answers. I'm like why is my son not here? Bu can't answer it, they're the CTE brain. Jake Forner can't answer it. I'm looking online there's nothing from the NIH and CTC about kids and CTE and what causes it. And I'm like how the hell do parents allow their kids to play if this is actually the cause, which I didn't know? Well, the only clue I had was my son saying hey, I'm schizophrenic and depressed. So I know that happens and I know you have to be schizophrenic when you run off a cliff sober and take your life. So you got to be hurting really, really bad.
Speaker 2:So I started researching those diseases. I found out that those forms of mental illness behavioral, psychological, the cognitive side he was still doing okay in school, he probably was going down and we never tested for it. But they all result from a damaged brain. It's been known for 40 years that schizophrenia and a damaged prefrontal cortex or synaptic death or demyelination, highly, highly correlated. I mean there's hundreds of research papers on this. So then I started researching on well, what could have caused my son's brain damage to get to those mental illness states? And I knew he had three concussions. They were over his eighth and ninth grade years of playing sports and they were over like a bunch of. He didn't have two in a row. He had one in wrestling, then one in football, then another one in wrestling, and the one in wrestling, I guess, was pretty hard.
Speaker 2:I was in Australia at the time. He got suplexed and I started digging into this thing called sub-incussive trauma. Well, at that time there were only really two or three research papers on the issue of subconcussive trauma and everything was focused on concussions. Right, concussions are bad, right, concussions, everything's on. Concussions. Well, concussions, I found out, don't have a dang thing to do, they're not good, right. But if you get a concussion which is like a TBI and then you do not repeatedly hit the head, you can heal, you can get back to where you were. When you start hammering the head over and over with these little subconcussive hits what we now call repeated head impacts that changes the brain at the microcellular level in critical structures like the prefrontal cortex, demyelination of the axons, synaptic shearing, synaptic death, microvascular changes like bleeding inside the brain internally, these little capillary creeds that over time change the brain and you end up with the same damage that causes that's been known to cause schizophrenia and depression. Well, now it's a math problem.
Speaker 2:So this old, grouchy sergeant major goes and figures out like that contact sports and some kinds of trauma is what is causing this mental illness that killed my son. So here comes dr ann mckee, the foremost researcher, and we're going to interview her here soon. Um on, on cte, she's got my son's brain right the top lady in the world. And she goes uh, you know, bruce, we't find CTE. And I'm sitting there with my wife and I said okay, dr McKee, I said, did you find structural damage to the brain? Because I don't know what she's looking for. I know she's looking for tau proteins, amyloid concentrations.
Speaker 2:She goes. She looks at me like I got these headphones on. She's like why would you ask me that I go, dr McKee? I I said, let me ask you this do you is it of your opinion that the 10 years that my son's played 10 and a half months of contact sports per year had anything to do with his decision to take his life? She goes, absolutely because he was a snowboarder if there was snow. Because, remember, my son's activity schedules started in july with football through october, then october, wrestling picked up because it started in September, they would go to March. Then, boy, if there was snow in Breckenridge, man boy, let's go.
Speaker 2:Breakfast pizza man. We were out there, we were banging it. He was double black diamond snowboarding. He's out there, didn't want to take less, more hits. She goes, absolutely she goes. But why would you ask me that? I said, dr McKee. I said I am almost done with a book that I have to write because I am finding out, and I am of the strong opinion, that all the subcustom of trauma that these young brains take, especially while they're developing, is changing their brains and contributing to mental illness. And then she goes tell me how he died. So we told her the whole story. She goes I'm going to go back and take a look. So again, here's the Lord Mac looking down, right.
Speaker 2:She comes back six months later. By that time I had already got her to read my book. She endorsed it and she sent me a note. She goes Bruce, it is all about the kids. And she comes back. She goes Bruce, we did. We studied your son's brain. She goes we found structural damage. Would you fund a study? I said I will. We gave them a quarter million dollars. God's been good to us. And for the first time this is why I'm kind of upset then he's like here I am a dad their kids to play contact sports because we think it makes them you know top or? Or you know, you know ownership, loyalty, all the awesome things you learn on a team, whether it's an A team or a sports team Right, and we're all operating in a vast field of ignorance and we're harming our children, and I'm. I was so appalled and my anger at that time rode towards everybody. If you had anything to do with, if you made football, helmets.
Speaker 1:you played the NFL. I don't like you, I don't care.
Speaker 2:And I was on a mission, dude, and so you know, and she comes back six months later and so we fund the study. So meanwhile we launched the book. I said, dude, we've got to do something about this. We started the foundation. You know, we just started small, you know, reaching out, getting on Twitter, letting people know. But you know, there is one thing that has helped us a lot is that, you know, in 21 years of business and being a Green Beret, the Lord's kind of prepped me for this. You know, I know what marketing is. I've had commercial companies, I've had defense contracting companies. I've done, I've started nonprofits. I was a plank member of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm the founder of the Global Soft Foundation, so I know I've started a nonprofit.
Speaker 2:I had all this life experience that kind of made me one of the actual, you know, like the right guys to start this thing, to start a movement, right, so well, I mean, that's what we did, man. We said, hey, this is what we're going no-transcript. And my son was in that sports system for 10 years. And now, with this new knowledge, they haven't done a damn thing and that's going to change. I'm going to make that happen. But in August of last year that study was released and they finally looked at every brain under 30 and out of 162 brains they said 40% of them had CTE. We all know that's not good. That's a large number that sucks. I mean, these kids are under 30 and we used to find it when it first started in the 50s and 60s. But those guys my age didn't start. They never had Pop Warner right now, so the exposure starts so early that we're finding CT earlier. But what was really what stood out in that study is that 100% of those brains were found to be structurally defective. 100% of those brains were found to have severe psychological disorders associated with them and 80% of them took their lives by suicide or overdose. Cte is not the problem. You don't die from CTE, you die with it. You die from mental illness that's associated with the changes to your brain that we know cause mental illness, bingo. So that's what happened to Mac and that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2:Is that young man? The way he took his life? You know my buddy. He came out for the funeral. He's an FBI guy and he ran FBI SWAT Chicago. He goes, bruce, I can understand. Maybe your son committed suicide. He said this, but it's how he did it, how he. What in God's name made him do it that way? He goes, dad is saying something bro, you need to dig into this Right, and he's. You know, he's a good friend of mine and he was right. I mean the way my son took his life for the being the kind of kid he was, live just man the kid. I mean it hurt him. I got stories about us hiding stuff from his mom that would bother him. Because, dad, you have to tell, like one time we raised chickens we didn't tell her that we bought it. It's like you want to tell mom, I'm like mac. He says dad, I'm like all right, and then next day you tell mom I said well, not yet, cause I knew I didn't want to know, I knew it was going to get hammered Right.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get hammered Dad.
Speaker 2:You have to tell her it's like all right, I mean, that's the kind of boy he was, man around. I gave him a couple hundred bucks a month for gas and McDonald's money. He'd buy a McDonald's. The stories I heard at the service, one of these kids coming up to me going I don't know if you know this, but Mac did this for me. I mean, that's who he was and that day obviously changed my life and I have to make him proud. So every day that's what I do I talk, I try to get people to understand.
Speaker 2:You know, we just had the first conference on some cuts of trauma in the history of the world. For some reason, after all these NFL deaths, after all these suicides and tragedies and hundreds of thousands of kids in mental health care, and nobody even knowing that this is an issue this is not trained for doctors, nurses, psychologists, athletic trainers Nobody even knows that this is an issue. Right now. This is how big our mission is and we'll talk about veterans because that's a whole nother. It's the same outcome, same problem, change brains, different pathway, blast exposure, right, we can talk about that anytime. So we picked up veterans causes now in order, because you know, hey, I know a little bit about veterans. I'm a retired guy. I got general anxiety disorder from a damaged brain, from all the crazy stuff we did. I got shot in the face, all that dumb stuff, you know. So now we're picking up veterans clauses but Mac is causing, Mac is driving this and we're not going to let them down. And for you to come on and volunteer to help us with producing this means so much because, man, the people we're going to have on this show and the noise that we are creating, and it's all good. We're not confrontational with anybody because it's not about let's kill contact sports. No, man, I'm still playing rugby. I'm 61, right, I'm all about smacking another guy, but I didn't start until I was 28. Brain doesn't mature until 25. Wait until we get Dr Julie Stamm on the show.
Speaker 2:Talk about that. It's all about look, we can have football, we can have rugby, we can have our contact sports. We can still have the most lethal military in the world. But we have to understand the concepts of repeated head injuries, repeated head impacts, impacts and repeated blast exposures, and we need to change the way we train, we need to change the way we play and we need to change the way we look at sports. A young kid, it's not about winning games all the time. It's about teaching you the beauty of participating in a team activity and the wonderful things that come out of that camaraderie, and yet protecting your brain so you can be a successful adult.
Speaker 2:We have no idea how much human capital and leadership we've lost from this issue, but that's what happened to Mac man. It's been a long, hard road, but I want to make noise man, Because I talked to Senator Rick Scott's guys up there. We're going to have congressional hearings next year. I mean, we are not messing around, yeah, and he says, look, just make noise. And when every parent that's allowed their kids to play finds out that this is an issue that has not been addressed by the CDC, NIH, the President's Council of Fitness, Physical Fitness, the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, all their position papers or contact sports don't even cover this, are years old, yet they're starting to support some of the changes.
Speaker 2:We need to have dramatic change, because kids are still dying. I was contacted by a family two weeks ago the contact organization. Their son jumped off a bridge into oncoming traffic and was killed immediately. You know what his only sin was. You know what his crime was? That young man loved to head the soccer ball and every day he would practice heading the soccer ball. And nobody said you can't head the soccer ball, because nobody knows that heading the soccer ball over years will change your brain. And then our soldiers whose only crime was hey, I'm going to go fight for my country coming back and not being assessed or diagnosed and then having treatments not available that can change your brain. We're going to fix all this, bro. We're going to fix all this, bro. We're going to fix all this. So yeah, man, episode one from the Mac Park Studios here on Annamarie Island, that's right.
Speaker 1:Bruce, I want to thank you for being so vulnerable and open and so passionate about this cause, because when we focus our energy into something that is deeply tied to our heart and to our mind and we don't't let any obstacles get in the way, we change the world, and that's exactly what you're doing and you've been doing this and to be part of this mission and help amplify it. Brother, I'm in 100%, real quick. If anybody's interested and they want to know more, where can they go to get more information about the Mack Parkman Foundation?
Speaker 2:You can go to. You can just look up Mack Parkman Foundation. Our website is wwwmpfact F-A-C-T the Mack Parkman Foundation for Adolescent Concussive Trauma. You can go just type in youth Contact, sports and Broken Brains. Our website should come up and you can go to where it says book. Click on that link and you can download the PDF for free.
Speaker 2:I am in the middle of the second edition right now. We're going to be adding chapters on traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, how this applies to veterans and stuff like that. So we're going to update the book pretty soon. But yeah, books for free. It'll change your perception on everything. It's only 88 pages, cause that's the problem with these books. You know, a doctor writes a book. It's a doctor book. Parents like I ain't reading that thing. You can read this 88 pages. He's even got pictures in it for veterans. Okay, pictures and 88 pages. One plane ride, a couple bags of popcorn, you know a couple of cokes. You're good to go and you will be informed. That's all we're asking. Make your own decisions, but you should be informed and right now we're not there.
Speaker 1:That's right. So tune in every week on Mondays to the Broken Brain Podcast and you're going to get some amazing insight into how you can learn more about your brain and what contact sports does to your brain. Thank you for tuning in, and next time you're not going to hear my voice at all. It's going to be Bruce.
Speaker 2:We'll see you guys later. Take care, you got a great voice. We might have to co-host a couple of them. See you, thank you.