NFL International Series 2012

Four months after the NFL sought to curb wholesale nfl jerseysdomestic violence in its ranks by launching a crisis hotline, a bolstered mental-health program and fresh encouragement for troubled players to seek help, that fortified safety net could not prevent the murder-suicide Saturday involving Jovan Belcher. The Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, 25,  22, at their home, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and killed himself in front of two coaches and the team's general manager.

After the high-profile suicide of retired NFLwholesale mlb jerseys superstar Junior Seau, 43, last May — two years after Seau drove his car off a cliff following his assault on a girlfriend — NFL commissioner Roger Goodell installed the 24-hour hotline for players and a reinforced mental-health initiative on July 26. That same week, following a spate of NFL-related domestic attacks — at least six other family violence cases in the NFL have been reported since 2010 — Goodell  to discuss possible solutions. 

Yet even as the league was taking steps to help mentally troubled players and their families, the Kansas City Chiefs were aware of Belcher's problems, Kansas City police spokeswoman Sgt. Marisa Barnes told NBC News.

And Police Sgt. Richard Sharp  that teamhttp://www.mlbnfljerseyssupply.com officials "were bending over backwards" to help the couple.

The Belcher murder-suicide is the type of nightmarish incident the league has been working harder to prevent, said Robert Gulliver, the NFL’s executive vice president of human resources/chief diversity officer. 

“One of the biggest things that we are trying to do here (in the NFL) is to change the culture, where people realize that it’s OK to seek out help for mental health issues,” Gulliver told NBC News. “We were very deliberate in ... making the point that mental health is part of total wellness, that it’s OK to seek out help for mental health issues because that’s part of your overall well-being."

In addition to help from the team's counselors, Belcher and his girlfriend Perkins, who was mother of his 3-month-old daughter and shared his home, would have had access to the hotline and the league's mental health program. 

At the end of July, the NFL emailed information on its new crisis line and on the league's available mental-health help to the home of every NFL player, Aiello said, adding: "The information is sent with the idea that the player's wife also sees it. If a player's girlfriend sees it, it would be the same thing."

What's more, all 32 NFL teams employ a player development director to help encourage use of the programs, Aiello said.

In addition, the NFL Players Association — the labor union for players — staffs its own 24-hour, toll-free hotline for players to use "if they need any support whatsoever," said George Atallah, NFLPA spokesman. "If a player has an alcohol-addiction problem (for example), he calls in and we route that call to a facility near them, and (facility members) then come pick him up and give him the assistance he needs. That goes for any depression issues and mental health issues." The NFLPA also offers counseling services to players, and it employs a group of retired players "to get a pulse of what’s going on in the locker rooms, handle situations confidentially, and provide support when necessary."

As part of what the NFL calls its “new comprehensive health program” — formally dubbed NFL Total Wellness — Goodell and the league worked with former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher last summer to strengthen its mental health tools and assistance. The new program encourages players and their families to seek support for behavioral issues, provides health and safety information and offers confidential, free advice via telephone and the Internet. That aid is available to all players and “all members of the NFL family” who find themselves “in times of need,” the NFL says. The same experts who operate the "NFL Life Line" run a similar emergency system for members of the U.S. military.

However, even with best intentions, the NFL remains essentially an elite club in which players have long been trained to hide physical pain — if not injuries — to keep their jobs. That environment could keep players from truly opening up about possible symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental-health woes.

Gulliver declined to say how many players have phoned the hotline and tapped into the league’s enhanced mental-health program via the web since its launch.

"We don’t publicize the actual usage or percentage numbers," Gulliver said.