In some way or another, if you’re an athlete, you’ve experienced the negative effects of mental health in your sport. This doesn’t mean that you were directly affected, it might have been a teammate or even a coach, but nonetheless, it is omnipresent.
I noticed it at every level that I played at. It didn’t discriminate based on the players’ skill levels or their commitment to the sport. It showed up in the form of a parent demanding why their child wasn’t the best on the team, the disastrous effects of a coach openly choosing favorites, or some teammates just having a rough go with life itself.
While I attended Slippery Rock, I found that despite loving the building blocks of social work as a profession (think communication, person-first practices, and supporting others), the traditional career paths didn’t speak to me. In my research methods class in my sophomore year, I discovered athletic social work, a brand-new niche in the field. I was stoked and poured myself into finding more information.
Seeing a need with our own athletes on campus, Stacy Arend – our head athletic trainer – and I created a preliminary group for discussing mental health in athletics. Later that year, I submitted a summary of the group’s goals and the future plans to the Social Workers in Sports Annual Symposium and was accepted! Due to funding issues, I ended up being unable to attend, but, through my research, I had found a passion and a lot of information that I wanted to share.
For a long time (and even still), athletes have been considered a “privileged population”. In the context of the vast support we received (teammates, coaches, academic support, athletic training staff, etc.), we were written off and expected to flourish. After all, traditional students rarely had access to all of that, so we must be fine, right?
The result? Student-athletes feel pressure to only address their physical health and push aside their mental health. When they would approach resources such as on-campus counseling centers, they were unable to get appointments during the times they needed them most (in-season), counselors didn’t understand student-athlete life, the proposed solutions weren’t realistic (you can’t really tell your coach “no”) and more. The list goes on and on.
I had my own battles with mental health in sports, though without a doubt, didn’t struggle nearly as hard as others I know and love. For me, it was allowing myself to get overrun by managing schoolwork, practices, a social life, and living off campus. I’ve found a lot of athletes are semi-control freaks (myself included) and when I felt out of control, it was disastrous. Another time, it was feeling like I didn’t measure up to my teammates. Another still, it was recovering from an injury and not being able to play soccer. There were more and I’m sure there will be more.
My point is that mental health is like physical health. There are periods when we’re healthy, eating well, fit and feeling good. There are other times when even though we’ve done all of the right things, we still catch a cold. It doesn’t make us less than, it just makes us human. Mental health is fluid, we all experience highs and lows, it’s just that sometimes we really feel those lows and for some, only feel those lows.
In the coming weeks, I plan to dive more into this subject and the different ways mental health impacts athletes’ daily lives. If you would like to share your story, please reach out. (You have the right to anonymity)
Especially as it’s suicide awareness month and our teammates and friends are experiencing an emotional ride as COVID causes dramatic changes to their norm, reach out and support one another.
If you or someone else needs resources, they can be found at suicidepreventionlifeline.org