Kyren Lacy’s Death at 24 Sheds Light on Black Male Suicide Crisis

By Adam Mahoney, Capital B

The former LSU standout’s death is part of a troubling rise in suicides among young Black men.

Kyren Lacy was a 6-foot-2 Southeastern Conference football player with a broad, if often absent, smile, a love for Buffalo Wild Wings and lemonade.

Some sports analysts even predicted that the Louisiana State University senior might go to a National Football League team as early as the second round of the draft this year. 

Instead, Lacy died by suicide at 24 and was buried on the final day of the NFL draft. The reason why a young person would end their life was, for a few weeks, the subject of rampant speculation, mostly on social media, websites, and podcasts that cater to Black audiences and the sports obsessed. 

Lacy had talked with friends for years about wanting into the NFL and the league pay that would eliminate his family’s financial worries, friends said. Then, in his final months, a tangle of events appeared to endanger that. 

[…]

Speculation about the reasons Lacy ended his life, experts say, is common but not productive or sensitive to family members left behind. Also, there is rarely a single reason, said Janelle R. Goodwill, who has spent the past decade studying Black mental health and suicide prevention.

[…]

The uncertainty about what led Lacy to end his life in many ways reflects a growing phenomenon. In the past five years, Black boys and young men are increasingly dying by suicide. During that time, Black male death by suicide grew almost 22%, the second-largest suicide rate increase in the country. 

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