That pressure would not have been unique to Meyer, whose death in early March shocked the sports world, said experts who work with student-athletes, none directly with Meyer, to help them overcome mental health challenges.
“College athletes are just as susceptible, if not more so, to most mental health disorders,” Dr. Claudia Reardon, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, told CNN in an email. “This surprises some people, who see these tough, physically flawless humans and wonder how they can be depressed, anxious or suicidal.”
Student-athletes live with the same demands as regular college students, like keeping up with their grades and social lives and staying connected with their families. But they also face pressure to perform on the field or court, demanding practices and training schedules, travel and, for those with high profiles, scrutiny from the public and fans on social and traditional media.
On top of all that, a stigma persists in the sports world around mental health: Discuss it, seek treatment and, perhaps in doing so, reveal what might be perceived as a weakness, experts said.
At the same time, participating in sports has huge wellness benefits for many student athletes, they noted, and can also help them deal with mental health issues. And college-level programs have increasingly made it a priority to hire psychologists and others attuned to the athlete mindset to support students who also attended college to play sports.
Still, the pressures student-athletes struggle with are different from those of their non-athlete peers, experts told CNN, while presenting different challenges for doctors and others who work with them to overcome the mental obstacles.
The demands of student-athletes create particular challenges
Of course, athletes are people too, and like any segment of the population, some struggle with mental health. But student-athletes’ mental health challenges are compounded by the demands on them and their bodies, and it’s not just anxiety or depression.
For one thing, injuries to student-athletes present a risk of post-traumatic stress, said Dr. Josh Norman, an assistant psychiatrist at The Ohio State University Jameson Crane Institute of Sports Medicine. After an injury, student-athletes might show hypervigilance, an “aversion” to certain movements or situations that might remind them of the “traumatic event,” all symptoms that can come up as they work in physical therapy, he said.
“These things can also happen in athletics when people are exposed to a very serious injury or witness a life-threatening (injury) or death of a teammate in extreme sports, for example,” he said.
A student athlete’s struggles with mental health can also have consequences for their physical health, Norman said.
For example, anxiety disorders can increase student athletes’ muscle tension or tendency to be distracted, affect their sleep and performance, and increase their risk of physical injury, Norman said. And when prescribing medications, he said, student-athletes and physicians need to consider how the drugs can affect athletic performance and whether they might be monitored or banned by the NCAA or anti-doping agencies.
The demands on student athletes’ time and the expectations they face often mean there’s not much chance of a break, said Chris Bader, assistant athletic director for mental health and performance at the University of Arkansas. While college students could take a mental health day and skip class, athletes can’t do that.
The attention of the media and fans can present another risk to the mental health of student-athletes, a sentiment also expressed by professional athletes like Osaka.
Osaka added that while reporters had been kind to her, “I’m not a natural speaker and I get big waves of anxiety before speaking to the world’s media.
College athletes can feel that too. Many are on a national stage, and Norman learns about bullying when a student-athlete loses a game or makes a mistake, he said. Being in the spotlight can also complicate student-athletes’ symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as their ability to seek treatment privately, as most people can, he said.
“Okay, I think a lot of our students are handling it well. They’re kind of excited about it,” he said. He knows of students with 3 million followers on TikTok, he said. “I think they accept those things. But it’s also, what impact does that end up having on their mental health?”
Fighting an old stigma
Among the biggest obstacles for some student-athletes seeking treatment is the stigma that experts say persists in the world of sports.
Athletes can struggle, Reardon said, turning off their “game face” when they walk off the field, and are often encouraged to push through adversity, something Bader described as an “old-school ‘dirt’ mentality.” and resist.'”
In addition, today’s student-athletes often arrive at college having already received counseling, Bader said. Some have worked with sports psychologists as youth athletes and recognize the resources available to them and sometimes even look forward to them. Coaches and trainers too, she said, recognize the benefits of good mental health and are well positioned to recognize when a student might need support.
Conferences and schools that host sports have also prioritized hiring sports psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals who understand the mindset of athletes, Bader said.
“A doctor with no sports training might say something like, ‘Well, if your sport stresses you out so much, why don’t you quit?'” Bader said. “That’s like asking them not to be right-handed.”
“That kind of intense understanding of athletics as a variable, almost like a demographic variable, is for me the first step in working in athletics, understanding athletics.”
But much remains to be done to combat stigma and offer help to those who need it, experts said. According to the NCAA study, less than half of participating athletes are “very satisfied” with the care they received from their schools and teams for mental health issues.
“But many universities and colleges,” he added, “need to have the resources and the staff to be able to put all of these things into action more consistently and more meaningfully.”
And it’s worth noting that, for many, sports, especially team sports, have mental health benefits for student athletes—that is, a community that serves as an integrated support system.
“Sports can be associated with building confidence, competition, character, caring, connection and friendships,” Reardon said, as well as “higher academic achievement.”
“I think that’s why you see companies wanting to hire former (student) athletes,” Bader added. “It’s the intangibles: It’s the programming, it’s the motivation, it’s the drive, it’s the competitiveness. We want to make sure it’s pointing in the right direction as it moves from our buildings.”
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