Newspaper photo of Brossart basketball player Derrick Rhoden taken in 2003 before his senior season.
By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Nick Rhoden has a newspaper photograph taken in 2003 of his brother, Derrick, clutching a basketball in each of his massive hands with his arms extended. At that time, Derrick was a 7-foot, 260-pound senior center on the Bishop Brossart High School team.
Derrick ended up scoring 854 points during this four-year varsity career with the Mustangs despite the fact that he was dealing with Schizoaffective disorder, a severe neurological condition that tends to affect people in their mid to late teens with symptoms of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder.
Nick Rhoden and his mother, Martie Rhoden Bessler, have been trying to raise awareness of mental disorders like the one that affected their family member. (Photo provided)
“A lot of people don’t know anything about it so when he was having his struggles people had no clue what was going on,” Nick said of his brother, who passed away last month at the age of 38.
To help raise awareness of mental disorders, Nick opened a bank account for the Derrick Rhoden Memorial Fund. He has already received more than $3,000 in donations, mostly through a GoFundMe website.
Nick said he plans to give the money to educational programs offered by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the Northern Kentucky Crisis Intervention Team.
“The only thing I can do is tell (my brother’s) story now and hopefully, for other people dealing with the same thing, it’ll make a difference,” he said.
During his senior season, Derrick had several big games for the Mustangs, who posted a 23-6 record. In the championship game of the All “A” Classic state tournament, he had 16 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks in a loss to Hazard to earn a spot on the all-tournament team.
Nick was still in grade school during his brother’s high school basketball career. He’s now a police officer for the City of Alexandria and encounters mental health issues on some of his emergency calls.
Derrick Rhoden had several big games for the Brossart boys basketball team while dealing with Schizoaffective disorder. (Photo from bmustangs.com)
He said the Northern Kentucky Crisis Intervention Team conducts training sessions that give police officers an idea of how to deal with that.
The key speaker at the meetings is his mother, Martie Rhoden Bessler, who spent more than 20 years helping Derrick deal with his disorder right up until he died.
“My brother’s story is told at CIT training meetings for police officers,” Nick said. “They train everybody so when we’re responding to people in crisis we can properly handle them, because it can go bad and the goal is to get them help.”
There are medications for people with mental health problems. Derrick received numerous prescriptions through the years after his first episode, but Nick said they were never 100 percent effective and caused physical side effects.
Nick said his brother declined mentally over the years and then encountered serious medical problems, including diabetes. Last month, he died at a hospital in Lexington due to a staph infection.
“What I found with dealing with a lot of people that have these problems is they try their medication and become aware that it’s causing them to act differently or have negative physical side effects so they just stop taking them,” Nick said.
Families dealing with someone with a mental health issue can contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness to find treatment options, support groups and other services. That’s why Nick is directing donations made to the Derrick Rhoden Memorial Fund to that organization.
“I started the GoFundMe on Jan. 13,” Nick said. “I wasn’t sure what would come in. I’m very overwhelmed and grateful.”
