Fixing the Mental Health Impact of High Level Sport
On the day of her 18th birthday, Ellie Soutter left her chalet in the French mountains, walked into the forest, strung up a rope, and hung herself. As one of Great Britain’s leading snowboarders, she was hotly tipped to medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Her distraught father felt that the environment she competed in was a significant contributing factor in her death. She had recently missed a flight to a training camp with her Team GB teammates. Interviewed by the BBC, he said:
“She felt she’d let them down, felt she’d let me down and tragically it just takes one silly little thing like that to tip someone over the edge, because there’s a lot of pressure on children.”
Ellie Soutter’s potential was gone, now just another entry in the journals of professional and Olympic athletes who have chosen to take their own lives. But was this tragedy an isolated incident, or are the treatable mental health issues faced by our top performing athletes something we need to pay more attention to?
College Athletes
The NCAA is the most competitive college sports system in the world, with top college players having a clear pathway to lucrative professional contracts or Olympic selection.
A recent review of 9 years of NCAA college athlete data suggested that the incidence of suicide amongst college athletes was lower than than the general college-going population. There were notable differences between sports and genders however, with the average college football player being 6 times more likely to commit suicide than a given female athlete. Overall the conclusion was that sport, even in the highly competitive US college system, was a force for positive rather than negative outcomes of this type.
It’s not all good news however. Covid has predictably had a significant impact on college athlete mental health this year. The number of mental health issues being reported by athletes has roughly doubled compared to the pre-pandemic numbers.
In this second report, female athletes had more worrying numbers across the board, with a disturbing number of athletes reporting mental health issues including mental exhaustion (49%), overwhelming anxiety (27%) and a sense of hopelessness (16%).
Olympic Athletes
For athletes seeking Olympic glory, the spotlight has definitely been cast on mental health in recent years. In his “The Weight of Gold” documentary, Michael Phelps describes the mental health impact of pursuing the same goal every single day for years on end. Win or lose, the resulting comedown once that day has passed can be devastating.
Other athletes also described the stress, anxiety and fear created by the social media and press scrutiny that comes from every action they take being dissected in front of an unforgiving array of television cameras. They are also highly aware of how their future career opportunities can be defined by fractions of a second in a single event on a single day. Already high achievers to the point of obsession, it’s hardly a surprise that Olympic athletes might be considered high risk for a number of common mental health concerns.
But like the NCAA reports, the 2019 IOC consensus statement on mental health found that there was no increased risk to athletes against the general population.
“There is no evidence to suggest that mental health symptoms and disorders are more prevalent in elite athletes, but it is estimated that a significant number of elite athletes are affected at some stage of their career.”
They still did identify a need to focus on improving the treatment and diagnosis for athletes, as well as creating cultural shifts towards a greater acceptance of mental health in the environments in which their athletes ply their trade:
“Management must involve both treatment of affected individual athletes and optimising environments in which all elite athletes train and compete.”
Combined, the college and Olympic data suggests that there is no elevated risk for athletes compared to other groups in society, but that there are specific areas where athletes do need additional support and that wellbeing for athletes in these environments can still be improved.
Professional Athletes
Of all the jobs in world, few get scrutinised in more detail than the performances of professional athletes. “Football is a game of inches” as the saying goes, and those inches can dramatically impact an athlete’s personal identity and overall sense of self worth. This is especially true when the athlete in question hasn’t yet separated their identity as an athlete from that of a more fully rounded individual with a diverse range of interests.
Top level athletes must be able to pursue perfection to an almost obsessive level, without letting injury, setbacks or defeat have a disproportionate effect on their mental state. That’s an incredibly difficult path to tread, and just like all other areas of athlete performance, teams who employ specialist coaches in the area of mental skills are seeing the benefits in terms of team performance.
A good example is professional baseball. The MLB is now leading the charge when it comes to helping athletes overcome their mental performance challenges, originally triggered by an urgent need to assist minor league players with their mental health.
In the bitterly competitive world of the minor leagues, the cream of college graduates fight tooth and nail to take the next step up to the big league. Living on subsistence wages and constantly grinding, the insider joke was that “One third made it, the second third turned to God, and the last third turned to drink”.
Player mental health was suffering and needed to be addressed by the organization. Their solution — bringing in qualified mental coaching staff — has made a dramatic difference.
Research from Harvard showed that major and minor league baseball players who worked with a mental skills coach “played statistically significantly longer (2.3 years longer, on average) and reached statistically significantly higher levels of professional baseball (1.25 levels higher, on average)” than players who did not. The interviewed players also reported improved overall satisfaction with the trajectory of their careers and other metrics related to personal happiness.
Teams that bake sport psychology best practice into their makeup end up with a better outcome in terms of both athlete happiness AND performance. The idea that you or your coach needs to push you past your mental breaking point to achieve your goals is outdated and dangerous.
How Does Mental Skills Coaching Work?
Now that mental skills coaches are becoming a valued part of the core coaching team at professional and Olympic level teams, regularly weekly mental training sessions are becoming more common in teams.
Regularly scheduled team sessions are being run to cover specific subjects like confidence, leadership and focus (try this free mental coaching workbook to see how some of these work) and these are then paired with additional one-on-one work. Apps like Champion’s Mind and Headspace are providing opportunities to help athletes work on their own mental game with carefully tailored breathing and visualization exercises.
Finally, athlete understanding is being updated to view mental illness and mental wellness not as an either/or, but as a spectrum that goes from illness to wellness to performance, leading to improved career satisfaction and a greater degree of confidence to reach out for help should the need arise.
Mentally Healthy, Peak Performance Environments
Unlike the sad story at the start of this article, the vast majority of sporting careers don’t end up staring into the abyss. That said, the pressure of high level sport does present a unique set of challenges for young athletes as they mature both physically and mentally. This is especially true when the athletes in question are analyzed under the microscopic lenses of TV, social media, personal expectations, coach and peer pressure and a family’s investment in their athletically gifted children.
In a mentally healthy, peak performance environment, athletes feel empowered to communicate because they can act without fear of retribution or stigma. They view mental skills as something they work on just like they would any other part of their sport — be it in the weights room, out on the track or field, or in the video analysis room. They have learned to focus on the next moment, not the last one and to compete against their previous best self, not the things they can’t control. Their culture and values drive their behaviours, and the close bond between players keeps everyone motivated and focused on their goals.
The coaching team should continue to unravel the stigma of mental health and deliver the support and coping tools each athlete needs to succeed now and at all stages of their careers. A strong, supportive and positive team culture and sense of purpose defines what is allowed and disallowed in the environment. Values are more than words written on the wall — they come with parables which are told and retold first by the coaches and leaders, and then by everyone else.
In the end, if each athlete is personally motivated to achieve their fullest potential, feels safe, supported and confident that they can enjoy their sport, then the dual goal of competitive success and personal happiness can be reached.
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If you'd like to deliver a mental skills training program for your team like the ones adopted by MLB and others but don’t have the budget for a full time sports psychologist, it might be worth investigating whether Champion’s Mind could help fill that gap for you. Contact us at info@champsmind.com or visit www.champsmind.com for more information.