A Mother’s Heartbreak: The Silent Tragedy of CTE
For Kerry Lowden, the image of her son, Nick, will forever be defined by his love for the game. From the moment he could walk, he had a football in his hands, relishing the thrill of competition. Nick was a natural athlete, a selfless teammate, and a young man with a bright future. But today, Kerry is left with nothing but memories and a grief so profound it defies description. At just 23 years old, Nick took his own life, and his family was later devastated to discover he had been suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive head impacts.
“And now it’s too late, he’s gone,” Kerry says, her voice heavy with a pain that no parent should ever have to endure.
For years, Nick struggled with mysterious, debilitating symptoms: sensitivity to light, mood swings, deep frustration, and crushing depression. He was an elite, disciplined athlete who trained hard, ate well, and avoided drugs and alcohol. He constantly asked, “What is wrong with my brain?” while seeking help from psychologists and medication, unaware that he was fighting a “beast” that no amount of therapy could tame.
The tragedy began to unfold years before his death. During a 2017 junior match, Nick suffered a heavy fall that left him dazed, yet he was sent back onto the field. Following that game, he began losing his memory and struggling with his mental health. According to neuropathologist Dr. Michael Buckland, the microscopic damage from years of “rough and tumble” collisions had been building up in Nick’s brain since his teens.
What haunts Kerry most is the lack of information. “I just can’t believe that we didn’t know about it and that the general public doesn’t know about it,” she reflects. She and her husband, Tony, were only introduced to the reality of CTE after they made the heart-wrenching decision to donate Nick’s brain to research, hoping to understand his “depressed brain.” They were blindsided by a diagnosis they had never heard of, despite the sport being Nick’s entire world.
Kerry is now on a mission to ensure no other family is blindsided by this silent epidemic. She is openly critical of the AFL’s stance on risk communication, feeling that the league has a moral obligation to be transparent about the dangers inherent in the sport. “The risks involved in that game are 100 percent their responsibility,” she asserts. “Unless someone knows what the dangers are, they can’t protect themselves.”
Today, Nick’s legacy lives on in his community through a memorial medal at his junior club. While his parents find comfort in honoring his spirit, his loss serves as a chilling warning. Kerry Lowden’s plea is simple: parents and players must be informed. She wants to ensure that Nick’s sacrifice serves as a turning point, urging the sporting world to stop treating CTE as a hidden cost of the game and start protecting the lives of the young players who, like Nick, trust the sport with their futures.
For Kerry, the silence surrounding this disease has been as destructive as the impacts themselves, and she is determined to break it—for the sake of every child still chasing a dream on the footy field.