78 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2021
DESTIGMATIZING MENTAL HEALTH STRUGGLES FOR STUDENT-ATHLETES
“The most common are in the areas
of stress and anxiety, which can be
quite debilitating, as we have seen as
a string of athletes over the last few
years have become more public with
how their mental health struggles have
impacted their performance and more
importantly their overall health and
well-being,” said Meredith A. Whitley,
Ph.D., associate professor of Adelphi’s
master’s-level Sport-Based Youth Development
program and co-editor of the
Journal of Sport for Development.
Playing on a public stage, student-athletes
may feel uncertain about how their
performance will be viewed and judged
by others, Whitley said. Furthermore,
their performance can impact their
ability to retain their scholarship, which
may add to their stress level.
College athletes have these unique
stressors on top of the other stressors
that their peers are dealing with, including
being away from home for the
first time (for students who live at college),
navigating challenging academic
schedules and expectations, trying to
make friends, and handling romantic
relationships.
“College athletes typically had a good
amount of success at the high school level
and it’s a different playing field when
they get to college,” Whitley said. “They
may not be performing the way they
have in the past and they’re adjusting to
a new coach, a new team, a new culture.”
College athletes were often taught from
an early age that if they get injured, they
need to push through the pain.
“When they start feeling depressed or
anxious, they view it through the same
lens: something that needs to be pushed
through,” Altman said. “We are trying to
retrain them so that if they step back
and ask for help when they need it, this
will often result in better performance.”
Colleges like Adelphi have robust mental
health programs to support all students,
including specialized programs
for athletes.
“We do programming around performance
anxiety and self-care,” Altman
said. “We meet with individual teams
and coaches to destigmatize asking for
help.”
The university has 21 teams, including
baseball, softball, and men’s and women’s
soccer, that compete in the National
Student-athletes’ mental health is in focus this fall. (Getty Images)
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
Division II.
Coaches and teammates are trained to
check in on fellow teammates to see how
they’re doing and on how to recognize
warning signs, such as behavioral or
mood changes, that could indicate a
student-athlete is having a problem so
they can begin a conversation.
“Covid-19 specifically has been very
challenging for student-athletes,” Altman
said. “Changes in the athletic schedule
resulted in student-athletes feeling
more isolated (they had less sense of
community because of less training),
more insecure about their body image
(they weren’t training as frequently),
and more depressed. The Student
Counseling Center is responding by
doing more trainings on athlete mental
health.” This will include a new support
group for athletes in the fall.
At Long Island University, the counseling
team in the Center for Healthy Living
provides outreach to the various sports
teams. This starts with conversations in
the summer.
“We make presentations to individual
teams to let them know we’re here and
how they can access our services,” said
William E. Martinov Jr., Ph.D., director
of athletics for Long Island University
in Brookville. LIU’s 34 sports teams play
in NCAA Division I and include men’s
football, men’s and women’s ice hockey,
women’s gymnastics, and women’s
fencing.
“We use the term student-athlete, and
there’s a reason why student goes before
athlete,” he said. “There are three goals
in the athletic program: to graduate our
student-athletes is the first goal. Second
is to help our young people grow and
fully develop as people who will go on
to do great things. The third is to win,
but not at the expense of the other two.
When a student-athlete is in need of
assistance or support, communication
is key, and counselors will work with
the student and the coach, all at a high
level of confidentiality, to serve the best
interest of the student-athlete.”
Altman said he is hopeful that Biles’ and
Osaka’s actions will lead to a “paradigmatic
shift” in how athletes address their
overall mental health and wellbeing.
“Biles and Osaka are true role models
for understanding that self-care is of
paramount importance and that mental
health is inherently connected to top
performance,” he said
FAMILY & EDUCATION
continued from page 77
“Covid-19 specifically has been very challenging
for student-athletes,” Josh Altman said.
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