Back From The Edge Steve Slotemaker Learns To Control Clinical Depression Before It Controls Him

This is what you never saw. A classmate - maybe in the room three doors down, maybe taking notes in the seat next to you - wondering, hoping this would be the day it would all end.

A teammate - sweating, working, praying with you - later laying awake in the darkness telling himself he was “a jerk and a waste.”

A Washington State University basketball player - Steve Slotemaker - poised at the precipice of death, wanting desperately to turn the wheel. Wanting his troubles and his life to be washed away in the Columbia River Gorge.

But you never saw any of it. Steve was so good at hiding it. The disease taught him that.

Major depression disorder (or clinical depression) robs its victim of hope. Feelings include a loss of interest or pleasure in almost all usual activities and pastimes, self-recrimination for things in the past or present, finding everything an effort, having trouble concentrating and thoughts of suicide. Most who suffer from the disease go months before telling anyone and longer before seeking help. Without treatment, symptoms can last for years.

The depression was maniacal. He was miserable.

“My only hope was ending it,” Steve said.

But you never saw that.

What you saw was an image created out of desperation by Steve.

You saw a player, who had missed his first year because of what he called “burnout” but was now contributing every night. Off the bench, playing offense or defense. Ready to help in any way. A student on his way to an MBA. A quick smile. Thoughtful words. And that’s Steve, all right. But that’s where it had always ended. That’s all you ever saw.

Until now.

Finally, Steve Slotemaker wants you to see him.

He wants you to see and hear about how it was a deep depression, not basketball burnout, that locked onto him like a pit bull six years ago, loosened its grip four years ago but is always ready to pounce again.

So, last Friday, one day before his final home game in a Cougars uniform - his father on one side, his mother on the other - he’s asking for forgiveness with one breath, giving thanks with another. Telling the world what he did was lie to himself, his parents and everyone that knew him because the disease wouldn’t allow anything else.

But now, it’s time to thank those who have helped him. Time to help those in need and show them there is hope.

The fall

The lifetime risk for major depression disorder is 10 to 25 percent for women and from 5 to 12 percent for men. At any point in time, 5 to 9 percent of women and 2 to 3 percent of men suffer from the disorder. Prevalence is unrelated to ethnicity, education, income or marital status.

The last time Steve was happy, he was 14.

“My right arm was broken, so I had to play with my left and I was just killing everybody,” he remembered. “I just thought to myself, `I’m good.’

“That was the last time I ever thought that.”

He was good. Taller, faster, quicker, better than those around him. He was Oregon basketball’s answer to Gil Thorpe. An all-American boy with a strong family and bright outlook.

By his junior year at Hillsboro High in Aloha, Ore., Steve was second-team all-state, first-team all-conference. He averaged 13.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists. His team was 24-2 and finished second in the state.

People were starting to take notice. Scholarship offers were coming in.

But the depression had a hold and it was methodically climbing its way to the top of his thoughts.

“In practice, there would be times he would not be there (mentally) for a little bit,” said former Hillsboro coach Doug Hofmeister. “We called it wigging out.”

He had signed his letter of intent to Washington State in the early period so he could focus entirely on basketball his senior season. It didn’t help.

Slotemaker’s game was slipping.

“People could watch Steve and see that he had the explosiveness and all the skills,” Hofmeister said. “Then they begin to wonder why he isn’t using them. Why he isn’t playing like someone with his talent should.

“Of course, they didn’t know what was happening with him.”

Gatorade still named him Oregon’s prep basketball player of the year.

“But they weren’t on the pulse of Oregon basketball,” Steve said.

The Beaverton Times named him the most overrated player in Oregon.

“In high school, when I was playing really bad, I kept telling myself try something new that will get you out of this little funk,” he said.

He tried everything - rational and irrational.

“I’d change the prayer before the game thinking that would help,” he said. “I thought, `If I pray for something that God wants more, then that will help me out. Praying for myself, maybe that angered God, so I’ll pray for the health of the team. Well, that didn’t work. So now, I’ll pray that it’s just a good game. That didn’t work.”’ When he didn’t get any help from above, he tried relying on himself.

“I’d put a piece of paper for goals for the game in my sock. So, during the game, I’d look at my sock, focus in on accomplishing those goals. But I never really did. I just didn’t have the motivation or energy to pull them off.”

His teammates noticed. There were grumbles of `Maybe Steve’s having an off night or in a slump.’ But they didn’t know the entire truth.

“He was closed off,” said Hofmeister. “And it was causing problems. I didn’t know how much to tell the team or what they knew.”

His parents knew something was wrong.

“He would come home and lay on the couch and that was about it,” said his father, David Slotemaker.

“He was a non-person,” added Mary Slotemaker. “Like an empty shell.”

Steve still thought he could shake it. So did his parents.

Then Mary found out just how depressed and miserable her son was.

“He came back after they had lost a game and I asked him how he felt about it,” Mary said.

“Oh, I don’t care,” Steve responded.

“That was a red flag right there,” Mary says now. “I knew that he cared very much about basketball. It was his whole life.”

“Steve,” she told him that day, “sometimes people suffer from something they don’t recognize in themselves and it’s called depression.”

Steve broke down. “That’s me,” he told her.

He admitted he had a problem.

He was still far from hitting bottom.

He went to a psychiatrist. He “conned” the psychiatrist.

He started talking about not playing basketball for WSU. His father couldn’t understand.

“Where’s your head?” David said. “What are you thinking? This is a great opportunity. Try it, it is not that hard. Just do it for a year.

“Oh, there is just a little depression, what does that have to do with it? Just snap out of it.”

Steve couldn’t snap out of it.

Hitting bottom

Up to 15 percent of patients with major depression disorder die by suicide. Suicide is the ninth-leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 1.4 percent of total deaths. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among young people 15 to 24 years of age.

It was the spring of 1995. Steve had made it through his freshman year at WSU. It was time to return home.

He called to tell his parents he was on the way.

“I hope I make it,” he told his mother.

By this time, everybody he knew was hoping he would make it.

He had quit basketball. Coach Kevin Eastman and athletic director Rick Dickson, who both knew of the depression, had agreed to honor his scholarship that first year. He would have to try out his sophomore year and earn back his scholarship if he wanted to play.

That first semester at WSU without basketball, things had gone well. He had a girlfriend. Friends. He was able to get out of bed in the morning.

The second semester, Steve was out of basketball but the depression was back.

“That second semester his freshman year, I don’t think I was ever aware of the agony and the pain,” said David Slotemaker. “He told me about the pain. He would go to bed, where there weren’t any distractions, and that was when he was in so much pain.”

“I remember he came to one of our games and I touched him on the back and it was like I was touching a skeleton,” said Hofmeister, his high school coach.

A desperate man always has a plan. Steve Slotemaker had dozens.

“Every time I would get really low, I would escape by thinking of a plan. Thinking of the end. Really depressing thoughts, suicide basically,” he said. “You think about that and it’s all over. That is what makes you feel good. You feel good when you think you are gone. You think about ways of ending it so you don’t have to worry about anything.

“The light at the end of the tunnel … and that was my light at the end of the tunnel.”

Steve decided he would drive toward that light.

When he hung up the phone with his mother that spring day, Mary Slotemaker began to pray. She had been told by doctors that if her son was suicidal, she needed to ask him how he had planned to do it.

“I never could ask,” she said.

“It would have been a car accident,” Steve later told her.

The car he was in this day was a 1960 Blazer his family had named Mildred. By the time he reached the Columbia River Gorge, the depression was ruling his thoughts and nearly his actions.

“I’d entertain these thoughts of driving my car in the river,” Steve said. “It made me feel good.

“I’d think `OK, I just drove into the ditch, I’m in the water, upside down, I can’t get out.’ “That was like utopia for me. Death was utopia to me.”

The 19-year-old son of David and Mary Slotemaker, sibling of Mark, Paul and Diane and friend to dozens of others wanted to die.

His parents had always told him: “Never entertain the thought of suicide.”

“And here I was doing it all the time,” said Steve. “I knew something was really wrong.”

But he didn’t turn toward the river and the light. He and Mildred thwarted the depression and death. Steve made it home safely.

He walked through the door at home, looked at his parents and told them: “I need help.”

The recovery

After the first episode of major depressive disorder, there is a 50- to 60-percent chance of having a second episode. After the second episode, there is a 70-percent chance of having a third. After the third episode, there a is 90-percent chance of having a fourth. The greater number of previous episodes is an important risk factor for recurrence. In recovery for severe major depressive disorder, 76 percent of patients on antidepressant therapy recover, whereas only 18 percent on placebo recover.

Steve has been taking Prozac since his sophomore year. He now knows his depression was caused by a chemical imbalance. Taking the medication is what he has to do every day to make sure the depression doesn’t come back.

He goes to counseling on a regular basis.

He has been a member of the WSU basketball team since 1996. He averages only 14 minutes a game, just 4.3 points. But life still is not the same as it was before the onset of depression.

The joy is there, but it’s fleeting.

“Playing basketball, learning basketball, watching the success in basketball, is still one of the greatest feelings I have,” he said. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m out there having the time of my life right now. But when we’re in practice and we’re scrimmaging, and I allow myself to take out the mind blocks, there’s nothing better.”

But because of what he has been through and what he lives with, Steve doesn’t allow that joy to become too great. Or the frustration and sadness of a loss to overwhelm him.

“Like last night (a WSU 79-73 win over Cal), I was excited during the game and in the locker room but that’s it,” he said “After losses, it is basically the same thing. By the time I get to the hotel room, lay down on the bed for 15 minutes, it is out of my head.

“I make sure it is.”

There are times he slips back into those moods that brought him to the brink of suicide only a few years ago. But now he is aware. He now has the tools to fight the depression.

“I’m more proactive, not reactive,” he said. “I’m always looking for signs. I learned from the history of me. If I skip a class because I say I’m too tired, that’s a sign for me.

“But if I can make it out of bed every day and into the shower, I know I’m going to be OK.”

So he lives with the depression. Struggles with it. But finds a way to survive and be successful in life.

And now, more than six years after it all began, he has begun to talk about it.

He’s doing it all so everyone can see the real Steve Slotemaker.