You wake up at 6:50 to get to school early and visit your teachers, because you had no idea how to do any of the homework. But no one cares. That one teacher still expects the assignment to be done. Yesterday was gameday, and your mind was anywhere but the classroom. Last night’s game was in Louisville, and you got home at 11:30. Things didn’t go your way last night. Sometimes you’re so exhausted and anxious in the car after losses like these that all you can do is cry your eyes out. The TV channel in your brain flips back and forth back and forth; you have no control. Flips and flips through self- confidence crises, losing the game, consequences, and college recruiting (is that one school going to want you?). People tell you it’s simple- use these losses as motivation. But is it really that easy? You don’t even trust yourself in those critical matches. Will I perform well enough for my team to secure that win? You take every rep way too seriously at practice, thinking this is do or die in a real match- if I don’t pass this ball perfectly every single rep then I’m not good enough. And you don’t know how to change your mindset. You’re representing your school, and the weight of your leadership position on the team threatens to pull you under. This sport you fell in love with as a child feels like your worst enemy. And you have to do it all over again tomorrow. This is the reality of mental health in elite athletes everywhere, and stigma and resources surrounding this topic must be addressed.
Let’s talk stigma. Dr Jeffery Lieberman, American psychiatrist, defines stigmas as dishonor or disgrace- it’s a label that casts one out. Athletes have the same stressors as most adolescents- social acceptance, grades, and forming personal relationships. And then some unique ones. Courtney Albinson, Associate Director of sports psychology at Northwestern University, states, “It’s not that student-athletes experience greater mental health concerns than the general student population, but they have some unique stressors. You couple that with a desire to ‘appear strong’ and that can sometimes lead student-athletes to delay help seeking or not seek help at all.” If an athlete struggles with mental health, they are labeled “weak”, and exclusion can follow, even by one’s own teammates. But wait? In the best movie on earth, Elle Woods famously says, “Exercise gives you endorphins; endorphins make you happy…” It’s more complicated than that, Elle. On the contrary, Dr. Marc Cormier, sports psychologist at the University of Kentucky says “Release of endorphins doesn’t mean people who exercise won’t encounter stress, especially in athletes. Other life events causing stress and even a chemical predisposition to experience stress and anxiety can also contribute.” Those unique stressors discussed earlier are certainly prone in every student-athlete’s life. The desire to “appear strong”. Scientifically, serotonin, a tiny chemical neurotransmitter that is used to communicate to different areas of the body, is primarily responsible for anxiety. Too much or too little serotonin is where anxiety fosters, prolonged by the body’s response to psychological and physical stress. It is also true that certain people are more inclined to have anxiety or depression than others. We oversimplify this vast topic- both scientifically and psychologically. Feeling depressed? Sleep it off. Having anxiety? Just calm down. It’s hard to understand something you can’t see or touch. Think about it like this: Athletes go to athletic trainers for physical injuries and need rehab to regain full health. But when confronted with a mental injury, athletes heartbreakingly “tough it out,” never healing anything, because they feel they have nowhere to turn.
In 2015, the NCAA conducted a survey of student athletes across the country. Around 30% of those surveyed reported they were “intractably overwhelmed” at the time of survey due to their athletic and academic load. The NCAA vaguely reported a general increase from the past years. No distinct numbers for depression or anxiety are mentioned. There are no other more recent surveys the NCAA has done. Similarly, not until 2009 did the NFL acknowledge that concussions could have long lasting effects on football players. These players were told to “tough it out,” a trite phrase I commonly hear in the elite sport world. More recently, former USC volleyball standout and proponent of mental health in athletes, Victoria Garrick, reported shocking results in her 2017 TEDx talk at USC. Of the 100 student-athletes she surveyed across the country at schools such as UCLA and Wisconsin, 69% reported “yes” when asked if they had ever experienced symptoms of depression. The next discovery was the most disheartening. When asked “Have you ever experienced anxiety, depression or an eating disorder and were too afraid to tell anyone?”, over half reported “yes”. These striking results are a byproduct of the stigma built up around these athletes, and the lack of mental health resources available to these athletes in previous years. Currently, the University of Kentucky has only two mental health professionals for athletes working at the University, one being Dr. Cormier, who only began working with student athletes in 2016. Dr. Cormier reports that prior to 2016, UK athletics had someone on staff doing sports psychology, but only performance enhancement. He explains, “At the time, athletes struggling with mental health were referred to the university counseling center. This was problematic for a couple reasons: most athletes were not able to fit the office hours of the counseling center into their busy schedules, counseling center officials may or may not have been trained to administer sports psychology, and athletes are visible on campus, and therefore may not want any other students to know they’re seeking counseling”. You heard it here folks. Until 2016, three short years ago, the University of Kentucky did not have adequate mental health resources for student athletes.
Seeing a sports psychologist this past summer wasn’t easy. There was that inner voice stigmatizing me that therapy was for “weirdos”, and that almost kept me from getting help. I had to come to terms that, “wow, I actually need a therapist”, but more importantly, that it was perfectly okay to see a therapist. NJ Bauman, author and psychologist in New York City, insightfully says in his essay, Stigma of Mental Health in Athletes, that “A mental health problem may well have started out long before a collegiate or professional career. Being helpful to an athlete, or anyone with a mental health issue, must start at the earliest of onset, rather than passing the issue on to the next level.” Bauman cites “change at the organizational level” with knowledgeable, ethical mental health professionals becoming available everywhere to athletes at the team and individual levels. I can easily attribute huge parts of my success this past season to the tools I received in changing my mindset and combating my innate performance anxiety. I look at the game from an entirely new perspective. I now strive to practice “the growth mindset”. This mindset provides that I am always growing and making changes, therefore ups and downs are an integral part of my journey to be the best version of myself. After all I’ve told you about my experience, you’re probably wondering: why do you do it? Why don’t you just quit? The answer is easy. I don’t quit because it’s part of who I am. Volleyball is a huge part of my life. I just need to learn how to manage my lifestyle. The way I once fell in love with the game still lives in me. On the court, I come alive. The love and feeling I experience is one of belonging; to the team, for that greater purpose.
In conclusion, this isn’t to say that there haven’t been major successes in the mental health community for athletes recently. Lebron James is now speaking out for mental health in his new partnership with Calm app. The NCAA earmarked 200 million dollars in 2016 for the purpose of enhancing mental health resources available to athletes. Athletes like Kevin Love and Victoria Garrick from USC are also speaking out. The Hidden Opponent page on Instagram, sparked by Garrick, features weekly stories of college athletes and their mental health battles, but most importantly how they’ve come out on top. Mental Health Awareness IS spreading, the difference is colossal compared to just a few years ago. And I’m all for it. Thank you.
Bibliography
“Athletes and Mental Health: The Hidden Opponent | Victoria Garrick |
TEDxUSC.” YouTube, YouTube, 2 June 2017,
Bauman, N James. “The Stigma of Mental Health in Athletes: Are Mental Toughness and Mental Health Seen as Contradictory in Elite Sport?” British Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 50, no. 3, 2015, pp. 135–136., doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-095570.
Humara, Miguel. “The Relationship Between Anxiety and Performance:
A Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective”. Volume 1, Issue 2. The Online Journal
of Sports Psychology. September, 1999.
Wilkinson, Joseph. “Northwestern Student-Athletes Work to Overcome Stigma of Getting Help.” The Daily Northwestern, 21 June 2018, dailynorthwestern.com/2018/03/07/in-focus/focus-student-athletes-face-unique-mental-health-challenges-work-overcome-stigma-getting-help/.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.