Hello and welcome to my podcast; today, I will be talking about studies showing how athletes deal with mental health issues. This has been a growing issue in the world of sports, with many athletes coming out and talking about how they struggle with issues on and off the field and or court, and they aren't players that no one knows of. They are pretty big names like Micheal Phelps, Serena Williams, Terry Bradshaw, and Ben Simmons. These are just a select few of the athletes that have come out and talked about it openly. According to Athletes for Hope, a nonprofit started and funded by big-name athletes to bring awareness to mental health issues, avoid them in young athletes, and help build them into better people all around, 35% of professional athletes deal with mental health issues. But to really dig deep, there are a few words we need to learn to better understand the situation these athletes are in.
Stress- a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.
Pressure- Constant force applied to an object (but in this case, we are talking about constant pressure from people around you to hold up a certain expectation)
These are both words that have an effect on someone's mental health, not just athletes, but when taken to an extreme in an athlete's case where every game has more meaning and every play is stressful, those feelings build up.
One of the first perspectives on this issue is that mental illnesses are induced by relationships with coaches and players. As stated in an article by Kelly T. O’Brien, players are expected to play at a high level from their peers and coaches. Professional athletes have to deal with the media and fans. Athletes always try to get in the zone before the game, but the article states that some athletes dealing with mental health issues cannot always get in the zone as easily as someone in a good state of mind (O’Brien 42). An athlete getting into the zone is all about their mind and body being connected. They are able to have the connection within their body that makes them a better player and really helps them get fired up for the game. When in the zone, the only thing on your mind is the game or the next play. An athlete dealing with a mental health issue would not be able to get in the zone easily, if at all.
Another article shows a completely different side of the issue of how the general public views athletes with mental health issues. An experiment done by Zachary C. Merz shows that athletes with disclosed mental health concerns were least likely to be signed and offered less financial compensation when compared to healthy counterparts (Merz 63). This is the same as a team looking at a player that sustained an injury before the draft. The team will then not take them as high in the draft because they do not know if the player will recover from it fully. This is the same type of behavior a team shows when a player has a mental illness, even if it is not messing with them physically.
A study was done by the NCAA, and they found that over 85% of athletic trainers felt that anxiety was an issue among student‐athletes on their campuses. (NCAA 72) Some student-athletes were asked why they didn't want to get help from some of the resources at their school, and 29 percent of them said they didn't have time due to practice and school work. When asked what conditions would increase student-athlete access to mental health care, the top three responses were free services, access to a practitioner with an understanding of the student-athlete experience, and the ability to schedule appointments online. (NCAA 73)
This brings me to my next article talking about how student-athletes view mental health issues. An estimated 10%–15% of college student-athletes suffer from clinically relevant psychological distress (Watson, 1). Other research has shown that a campus-wide average of 8%–9% of student-athletes seek help from campus mental health services (Watson & Kissinger,1). The studies showed that athletes said they felt weak if they had to go see a therapist or did not feel comfortable seeing a therapist because their counterparts might look at them in a different light.
This has been an amazing episode talking about athletes dealing with mental illnesses. There are so many viewpoints on this topic, and you may have a similar opinion as some of the articles I talked about, so thank you for listening, and I hope everyone has a good day.