Kevin Chapman had briefly stepped away from watching Monday night’s Bills-Bengals game at his house in the Louisville area when his phone began buzzing. The texts were alerting him to the news that Bills safety Damar Hamlin had gone into cardiac arrest on the field.
Rushing back to his television, Chapman, a licensed psychologist and the director of the Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, felt himself kick into clinical mode as he followed along with ESPN’s live coverage. “My mind immediately went to the players who witnessed it,” says Chapman, a former Division III running back himself. “I was like, ‘Shoot, this could be budding trauma. They’re gonna need to take care of their mental health.’”
Think of what happened to Hamlin as having an emotional blast radius, rippling out in concentric circles, washing over thousands of observers on the sidelines and in the stands at Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium; millions more viewers at home; and countless others who later saw the replay of Hamlin collapsing after making a tackle. “Anytime we see something that is life-threatening, our normal human reaction is a visceral one,” Chapman says. But the potential impact is strong among Hamlin’s fellow players, a number of whom literally encircled the 24-year-old to shield everyone else from the sight of his receiving the CPR and defibrillation that restored his heartbeat before he was transported to University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
