Elite Athletes and Mental Health Concerns
May is the National Month of Mental Health. We all should reflect upon the way we feel and the state of our mental well-being - but how do we treat our athletes and do we know much about their state of mind, body, and soul?
The Canadian Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC) Sports Bulletin, February 18, 2022 provides some staggering statistics. Up to 35% of Elite athletes experience mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Although the data applies to Canadian athletes it is safe to assume that US Elites have similar statistics.
The body and mind are greatly affected as current research points not only to increased anxiety, depression, mental and physical breakdown, and suicide attempts but actual deaths among elite and even lower level athletes. Stanford University Female soccer Star, goalie Katie Meyer (22), died by suicide in her dormitory room on March 4, 2022. Twenty-one –year old Star Cross-country runner, Sarah Shulze, University of Wisconsin, died April 13 in Wisconsin. Parents revealed that their daughter "took her own life. Balancing athletics, academics and demands of every day life overwhelmed her in a single, desperate moment," the posting said.
In order to manage mental health conditions in sports, the International Olympic Committee recommends taking an individualized and interdisciplinary approach, optimizing training and competition. Well, maybe the IOC ‘shuffling’ billions from the Olympics need to show more action such as financial support for Sport Federations to be able to address this issue… and not just display a mighty academic bulletin and guidelines to demonstrate that indeed they support or believe in such position!
“Progress without Profit: the IOC benefits itself at the expense of athletes, according to Sophie Roppe (August 16, 2021, Daily Trojan), provides an interesting insight. Similarly, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, for example, gave American athletes 8% of its revenues in 2016. Presently, billions of dollar revenue flows through the IOC. However, the organization invests little directly back to the athletes. Compared to professional leagues, where athletes receive 50% of revenue, Olympic athletes receive less than 10%. The rest goes to what the IOC ambiguously refers to as “The Movement.”
The issue of the mental wellness of athletes has been ignored for a very long time. I presented the topic way back in the late 1980’s as many coaches in the audience laughed and thought I was a ‘lunatic!’ Still, I for one could never understand the reason athlete-performance related issues were not addressed, studied, and researched much earlier. The idea of practicing sport psychology didn’t gain much momentum until the 1960’s, but some researchers were starting to think about studying the way performance is affected by mindsets even before 1900 but it never went far enough. So, the sports community waited a long time although the first suicide by boxer Kid McCoy ended his life on April 18, 1940 by taking sleeping pills. Part of his note read, “To all my dear friends ... best of luck ... sorry I could not endure this world's madness."
Athlete suicides were more reported during the early 2000s but began to escalate from there on out. In the December 2020 Newsletter, I wrote a lengthy essay: Modern Athletes – Human Beings or Mortal Engines? Sports Not Prepared to Deal with Mental Wellness of Athletes”, which discusses the mental states of elite athletes, suicides by Olympic athletes, and suicidal thoughts by the most decorated USA swimmer, Michael Phelps. So what has been done? Most Sports Federations have begun to address the issue but the fact is that not only Elite athletes but also lower level and developmental athletes experience mental issues. These issues are expected to increase even more due to the Pandemic lockdown, according to experts. We are already seeing the impact on young children. As far as the IOC is concerned, they are happy to ‘turn out’ their academic recommendations and guidelines while real and practical every day action is needed.
The Proposal by the IOC:
…The Medical and Scientific Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recognised the need to protect the mental, as well as physical, health of athletes. As part of its commitment to supporting the health and performance of athletes and to the continuing professional development of those who care for them, the IOC Medical and Scientific Commission offers a postgraduate-level Diploma program in Mental Health in Elite Sport. This program is designed primarily to meet the needs of sports medicine physicians, psychiatrists, other physicians, and other qualified mental health professionals…
A Certificate in Mental Health in Elite Sport will equip members of the athlete entourage with the knowledge and skills to recognise potential mental health problems at an early stage and to appreciate the need for referral to professionals equipped to provide appropriate treatment…
All right! This applies to Elite athletes but few Clubs can financially afford those recommendations for younger or developmental athletes. So, they are left on their own with coaches, who do not necessarily have the psychological background or the training to deal with these heavily loaded issues. Once again, I ask, “are Sports prepared to deal with the mental wellness of athletes” because mental training and mental wellness need to be integrated into daily training early as possible not only for successful future athletic performance but as a lifetime skill and for life quality!
IOC Action to Date
In 2018, recognising the importance of mental health, the IOC Medical and Scientific Commission assembled a team of international experts to review the scientific literature addressing mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes. The result was a landmark Consensus Paper, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in May 2019, which recommended prevention and management techniques for doctors, psychiatrists, and other professionals who work with elite athletes.
International Athletes’ Forum
The Co-chair of the IOC Mental Health Working Group, Vincent Gouttebarge, and the athlete representative, Abhinav Bindra, joined a vital panel discussion on mental health at the International Athletes’ Forum in April 2019. The panel also featured IOC Medical and Scientific Commission Chair Dr. Richard Budgett, and Gracie Gold, the American figure skater and Olympic medallist, who has been so open about her struggles with mental illness. “At first I didn’t want to come out about it because of the stigma, which made me feel like I was the only one who wasn’t strong enough,” Gracie said of her decision to tell her story in the media. “But I got hundreds and hundreds of responses from athletes at all levels and in all sports, saying ‘me too’.”
The panel discussion and the response has helped bring forward the discussions on athlete mental health across the globe and supposedly was to lead to the creation of a Mental Health Toolkit for athletes, a project which is being driven by the IOC Athletes’ Commission. The IOC Mental Health in Elite Athletes Toolkit was released in Spring 2021, months after my Newsletter essay was posted on the Website in 2020!
The most recent edition of the International Athletes’ Forum took place in 2021 and featured a renewed focus on the topic of mental health. An athlete well-being panel featured IOC AC Member Abhinav Bhindra, Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn, and others, who spoke openly about some of their struggles and how important open dialogue is to creating a safe space for athletes. The question is: how to train coaches at all levels to be able to deal with the mental health of athletes where, how, and who is going to finance such training and education?
References:
International Olympic Committee [IOC] (Spring 2021). IOC Mental health in elite athletes toolkit, retrieved February 22, 2022 from https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/DocumentLibrary/IOC/ Safe-Sport-Initiatives/IOC-Mental-Health-in-Elite-Athletes-Toolkit.pdf
International Olympic committee [IOC[. (n.d.). Leading the way on athlete mental health. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https://olympics.com/athlete365/well-being/leading-the-way-on-athlete-mental-health/
Ranker (2021, April, 28). People in Sports. Athletes who took their own lives. Retrieved February 22, from https://www.ranker.com/list/athletes-who-committed-suicide/people-in-sports
Roppe, S. (2021, August 16.). Progress without profit: The IOC benefits itself at the expense of athletes. Daily Trojan. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https://dailytrojan.com/2021/08/16/ progress-without-profit-the-ioc-benefits-itself-at-the-expense-of-athletes/
Schloder, M.E. (2020, December). Modern Athletes: Human beings or mortal engines? Sports not prepared to deal with mental wellness of athletes. Newsletter: coachingbest.com
Sportsoracle (n.d.). IOC programs in mental health in elite. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https:
//www.sportsoracle.com/Mental+Health/Home/
https://www.ranker.com/list/athletes-who-committed-suicide/people-in-sports
https://www.carolinaperformance.net/new-blog/2015/6/24/where-it-all-began-the-history-of-sport-psychology-research