High Performance Athletes Mental Health

Dating back to the B.C, small sports were created for people to have some sort of entertainment and a way to avoid the problems people were facing. These sports were then put into the greek olympics where people competed in different categories and their goals were to amuse the audience and showcase their skills. This is what inspired the concept of sports and since then sports have become one of the most talked about topics and continues to be used for strength and amusement. Doing sports was a way to face fears and overcome difficulties. In fact, sports were what got people through the most difficult times each country has battled. The whole purpose of a sport was to serve as a distraction from reality, but times have changed. Sports have developed into a major justification for the amount of people getting diagnosed with a mental disease. Sports take away the time and energy an average person needs to live healthy and happy. The newer generations don’t realize how sports can have a large effect on a person.

Before exploring the health of an athlete its important to understand what mental health is. Mental health is characterised by emotional wellbeing and resilience to stress (ClearingHouseForSport Australian Government Ralph Richards 9th June 2016). Mentally healthy individuals are able to cope with daily stresses and fully participate in family, work and in this case sport activities. A mental disorder is a diagnosable illness that affects a persons thinking, emotional state and behaviour and disrupts his/her ability to carry out normal daily activities and maintain personal relationships. Exercise has many benefits, not only for physical health but also your mental health as well. In the brain, exercise stimulates chemicals that improve an

The negative impact mental health has had on student-athletes is a continuous problem across the globe and has been a topic of interest in the research world for many years. The stigma behind mental health have lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety, reluctance to seek help, the sense of helplessness and loneliness and many more. In a student-athlete, these stress levels are brought upon the individual for multiple reasons. For example, student-athletes have to accomplish a certain degree of success both on the playing field and in the classroom (A.P. , Deitrick, J.M. , & Reynolds, E. (2016). Maintaining a required average and playing time can become not only physically but mentally exhausting. This literature review will discuss the barriers and facilitators to mental health in student-athletes and how the stigmatization of those student-athletes who suffer from a mental illness have an impact on their everyday life.

Granito Jr. and Vincent J. did a study in 2002 over the psychological response to athletic injury. The purpose of their study was to describe the athletic injury experience, focusing on differences between male and female athletes. 31 injured athletes (15 male and 16 female) were interviewed about their athletic injury. Each participant went through an interview process, consisting of an in-depth interview and follow-up telephone interviews. The interview data were analyzed, and compared between the male and female athletes. The results showed that female athletes tended to perceive the coaches as much more negative with respect to how the coach treated them following their injury; were less likely to talk about a significant other (boyfriend/girlfriend); and were more concerned about how the injury would influence their health at a future point. Conclusions focused on possible explanations and how the results fit into the current theory for the psychological response to injury for each gender.

Are you at more risk to develop a mental illness if you are a professional athlete?

Carol Seheult, a sports psychologist was noted saying, “When I see professional footballers they insist on complete secrecy because they fear it could get back to their manager, they worry that they'd be seen as wimps” (Dunning, 2003). The social constructs of male athletes and how they should be strong and not emotional has allowed the community to scrutinize athletes who don’t keep up with this manly image. Athletes continue to play in sports regardless of their mental health issues as they are afraid to speak on the issues themselves. This leaves many male athletes unable to get the help they need or the time they need to recover. Instead they continue rigorous training regimes that only add stress to already present problems. This is an image that has been constructed as a society and is one that require athletes to push themselves to victory even though they are suffering from mental illnesses. The social constructs created by society prevent many athletes from receiving the hep they need and is a problem that can only be solved as a

With significant sport injuries, it is expected for athletes to become exposed to emotional interferences following the injury. Research proposes that athletes follow a five step plan called the grief reaction. This includes denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. (“Psychological rehabilitation techniques”) Denial is typically a first response to any injury but then after the initial shock phase passes athletes then begin to experience more anger. These feelings of anger can be conducted toward themselves or can be taken out of others such as coaches, teammates and family members. The magnitude of anger really all depends

There are cross-sectional and longitudinal data in support of the belief that loss in the form of chronic competitive failure can elicit changes in athletic identity. First, suggesting that doing poorly in sport may differentially affect athletes as a function of their level of athletic identity, Cutler and Meyer (1995) demonstrated that individuals who were strongly identified with the athlete role and were dissatisfied with their progress in sport had lower self-esteem than individuals less invested in the athlete role who were also dissatisfied with their progress in sport. Second, Fish et al. (1997) found that athletes who were not selected for an elite squad decreased their athletic identity, while athletes who were selected maintained

I was upfront and direct with him and recommended that he hire both Dr. Berkowitz and Dr. Brady. I explain to him the depth of the clinical issues that needed addressing plus the need for a mental skills training program to address the lack of knowledge and ability to apply the fundamentals of sport psychology intervention techniques. I provided him with examples of other professional sports programs that had had great success with sport psychology interventions. The Coach said he still wasn’t sure if sport psychology would be the answer for his team.

The interesting discussion with collegiate sports is whether overtraining leads to depression. When communicating with SIUE’s head coach, Leah Johnson, I expressed this debate to her. Immediately, Johnson replied, “We don’t over train so that isn’t a problem for us”. Unfortunately, being her player doesn’t allow me to argument my points. In fact, people have argued that overtraining in leading to depression and depression is leading to thoughts of suicide.

In our modern day, sport is highly valued and supported in our society. Our sports heroes are role models to society and are easily viewed as invincible. However this is a dangerous assumption as mental illness is an evident issue among the sporting community. These mental health issues in sport are only beginning to receive light and only due to the drastic negative effects it has already had on athletes. Stigma promoted by the media encourages athletes to believe that mental illness is a weakness to the athletes performance. This thinking only compounds the issues. The athletes do not want to damage or tarnish the view of their fans and will often ignore any symptoms of mental health illnesses, if help is offered, they may refuse or only

As hard as world is, I think most people can accept a reason or two, especially when it’s out of anyone’s control. But excuses have to go right out the door.

Mental factors are extremely important in relation to success in sport and the adherence of a physically active lifestyle. Mental factors such as confidence and efficacy hold place in such a way that limits and enables athletes to commit or quit an activity. Mental factors limit ones ability to motivate self to work towards a goal that is set fourth either by a team or an individual client seeking fitness achievement. If an athlete or client is not mentally prepared then they may fall short of achieving their process or even outcome goals. This disparity can leads to the cease or demise of ones athletic and or fitness career.

In the world many people are sad and depressed and just don’t feel the need to do anything at all other than sulk and wish they were dead, this is not the way someone should live. There should be some way to take someone out of this depressive state or to keep someone from ever reaching it but what? The answer is organized sports and their ability to kick start hormones in the body and allow for a new sense of happiness within the body. To find out the depression levels of the participants and see if physical activity effects all participants with different levels of depression or only participates of low levels of depression, we will use a beck depression scale to test the levels of the participants throughout the study. This is important because it will help to bring about a new way to keep a large amount of people away from depression because we know the effects of physical activity on society in order keep depression at a controllable rate.

Over the years many distinguished sports psychologists have developed various theories and tests in order to correctly identify competitive anxiety in athletes. These theories and tests have been used in conjunction to understand and