College athletes are often painted as lucky and opportunistic. Although this may be true, why are we hearing about all of the struggles and mental health issues now? Athletes have always been told to “toughen up.” This stigma made it hard for athletes to be open with themselves about their true feelings within their sport.
Every week there is a new story about a student-athlete coming forward and telling their story of struggling with mental health. The stigma of mental health needs to change and it starts by simply starting a conversation. One conversation could save a life.
Everyone sees talking about mental health as a somber and serious topic. Nobody talks about mental health because it makes people uncomfortable. The more we talk about it, the more comfortable we will become.
A Bradley University softball player, Camryn Monteer, spoke about her opinions on why we are hearing about student-athletes mental health so often.
“The expectations that coaches and staff put on their athletes is absurd. The worst part is the over-the-top consequences that an athlete will endure if these expectations are not met,” said Monteer. “Coaches are not aware of their players’ mental health like they should be. If they were, we would not have this nationwide mental health problem within athletics.”
“You have to be mentally tough” is no longer an appropriate excuse to tell an athlete when the sport starts to get hard. Most student-athletes would be able to sit down and have a conversation about how hard the role is. The athletes would be able to find resonance in one way or another. This constitutes as a common occurrence. Why can’t we be honest about something that is so common?
Chart shows the amount of athletes who have been diagnosed with a mental disorder and the amount of those athletes who seeked treatment
Bradley University sports medicine staff member, Anna Sundy, talks about the importance of rehabbing your brain.
“Coaches need to be receptive to athletes needing mental health breaks,” said Sundy. “To break through we need to start treating it (mental health) as a physical injury with the same respect. Simil
ar to rehabbing an injury, we need to find a way to “rehab” the brain. We become more aware of these issues the more we open up to different therapies. There’s no reason to continue this mental health taboo that the world has created around athletes, especially college athletes,” said Sundy.
Simone Biles took the world by storm when she stepped down from gymnastics and voiced that the reason was to better herself and her mental health. This is the first step in better understanding this issue. People in management positions who are actively struggling with mental health need to open up to open the conver
sation.
This is an acceptance issue because in the cases of these athletes losing their lives to suicide, it is almost always expressed how their peers never saw it coming and how happy they always seemed. Strip away the accolades and the success and their perspective sports, there’s just a kid left. A happy kid who could not find a way out of the darkness that the pressure of their sport brought them.
Chart shows how NCAA student-athletes have died from the years 2012-2020
Another Bradley University softball player, Keeler van Breusegen, speaks on the resources that a lot of these schools have. She also talks about mental health in athletics is viewed by outsiders.
“People who surround themselves in sports do not understand so I cannot imagine outside viewers would get it either”, said van Breusegen. “Athletes at all collegiate levels are going through the same things. Smaller schools do not have access to nearly half of the resources that larger schools have but that doesn’t mean they are not struggling too.” Van Breusegen also touched on the reality of sports in college. “Athletes don’t realize what they are getting into until they’re already in it. Then you have the pressure of what people are going to say if you quit. There is no right answer.”
Chart shows 465 NCAA D1 athletes depressive symptoms divided by gender
The old school, “sports are hard” is not relevant anymore. Kids are getting pushed too hard at too young of an age today. Sports will never be easy but at the end of the day it is a game. A game, or anything brought on by said game, should not make an athlete feel like they need to take their own life. Playing a sport should be something that a person is lucky enough to do. The standards of athletes having to work hard should remain but the system behind that standard is what needs to change.