‘A living hell inside of my head’: For first time, more advanced stage of CTE diagnosed in teen football player
November 20, 2023
(CNN) In July 2019, just months after graduating from high school, 18-year-old Wyatt Bramwell took his own life. About a year later, researchers at Boston University diagnosed him with stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, caused by playing tackle football for several years.
Wyatt’s mother suspects that he knew what he was doing when he died.
“He shot himself in the heart, not the head,” Christie Bramwell said. It was her son’s dying wish to donate his brain to CTE research, and the only way to diagnose the disease is through an autopsy of the brain.
In Wyatt’s brain, researchers discovered the first case of stage 2 CTE to be diagnosed in a high school football player, according to Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center, who diagnosed Wyatt.
The Kansas City, Missouri, teen had the worst brain trauma ever seen in someone so young, according to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
“This is an example of a person with fairly advanced damage to his brain, given that he only played amateur football and his highest level was high school,” McKee said.
Wyatt’s condition was caused by playing tackle football for about 10 years, including four years in high school, McKee says. Bramwell says he started playing flag football at 5 years old and advanced to tackle in the third grade.
Bramwell says she knew what CTE was but thought it was only found in older professional football players. She never imagined the disease would alter her life forever.
“I thought the worst thing that would ever happen to my kid maybe was a bad tackle. Something broken, something bleeding. That wasn’t the case.”