Blog Post 3
Cade Robinson
PS101
Dr. Jenkins
April 14,2022
Student Athletes Mental Health
According to the American College of Sports Medicine 30% of female student athletes and 25% of male student athletes have anxiety. For most student athletes this anxiety stems from all the pressure and things going on in their lives. They can be anxious for a big game coming up, or a big test. This stems from the fact that they have a lot going on. They have class, homework, studying, games, practice, film, and workouts to focus on which can take time away from one another. This can lead to student athletes feeling unprepared for their upcoming events leading to anxiety. Some other mental health problems student athletes face are becoming burnt out, depression, and substance abuse disorders. Becoming burnt out happens to most students and athletes towards the end of the semester/ season, but is exponentially worse for student athletes in season. A lot of times they become burnt out earlier and become more burnt out. This can lead to grades dropping and their on field play not being as good. Depression also can affect student athletes a lot, they can become depressed from potentially failing a class, getting injured, losing a game, or under performing. Most student athletes will face depression during their career. Substance abuse is also bad among student athletes. They can abuse things as simple as caffeine, Advil, painkillers, or majuana. A lot of student athletes rely way too heavily on substances that can be unhealthy. These are just some of the mental disorders student athletes face, and there's just too many reasons/things to be able to focus on in one essay, so these are some of the ones I will be talking about.
These mental disorders affect the student athlete community in a major way. It affects their school performance, athletic performance, health, and even their future. These mental disorders can lead to under performance in the classroom, and not going to class. When burned out or depressed you may choose to skip class, or not do work because you don’t feel like doing it. Anxiety can make you do worse on tests due to you being so worried that you second guess your answers, and substance abuse can lead to lack of focus in the classroom. Athletically these mental health issues can also affect you, they can make you underperform at practice and games. Anxiety can make you hit a slump which negatively affects your play. Becoming burnt out can lead to you not paying attention at practice, and not practicing hard which can negatively affect your performance. Substance abuse can cause many different problems when playing, and can be very dangerous. Health wise many of the mental problems faced can negatively affect you. One big one is substance abuse. Caffeine addictions are unhealthy and can cause many future problems, along with painkillers. Your future can be greatly affected by these mental problems. You can develop unhealthy addictions that can lead to diseases and potentially premature death. Becoming depressed or burnt out could cause you to drop out of college, quit your sport, or even in extreme cases suiside. These could all negatively affect your future life, or end your life earlier than what it was supposed to.
These mental issues student athletes face can affect everyone around them. Depression and becoming burnt out can affect their coach. A lot of coaches see their athletes like their kids or family, so watching their athletes become depressed can be very concerning for coaches and can negatively affect a coach too. Coaches tend to feed off of their teams energy, so if their whole team is down the coach might become down too. If depression becomes bad enough that kids start quitting their sports, it could also end up getting the coach fired or making the coach question if he is coaching right. This could lead to the coach becoming depressed. Teachers are also negatively affected by the student athletes dealing with mental health issues due to the fact most of the time student athletes neglect the student part of their role when facing these issues. Most affected by student athletes' mental problems are their friends. When going through something like depression it may cause you to become a worse friend, or not around at all. Their friends can get lashed out on for no reason if it has been a rough day for the student athlete. Substance abuse issues can also cause their friends to start worrying about the student athlete they are friends with, which may take away from something else going on in their friends life. Their friends may start trying to help the student athlete, which they may not like which could cause fights and arguments. This could potentially lead to loss of friends. These mental disorders affect almost everyone involved in a student athlete's life.
There is no true way to stop student athletes from developing mental disorders, but there are ways to help. Mental health days might help give student athletes some time to decompress, or get extra work done so they are less anxious. A way to maybe help athletes not become burnt out is to have a day off once a week, or to have a fun practice every once and a while. To help with depression you could let athletes know some of the programs and things that most colleges have to help work through it. Substance abuse can be watched over and talked about by trainers. Trainers could explain how taking 10 Ibuprofen a day every day can be very bad for you, or how drinking energy drinks/preworkout every day can negatively affect your body. Most of these mental illnesses that student athletes face can be challenging due to the fact part of it is the student athlete being able to step up and ask for help, or recognising they have a problem. Most colleges have counselors and different eminitys for people to use to help their mental health, but they are not widely known so people don’t use them. Overall the best way to help student athletes face mental disorders is to educate them.
Sources
News, Chicom. “American College of Sports Medicine Issues Statement on Mental Health Challenges for Athletes #Auspol #Chinesenews.” Chinese News Feed Aggregator, 28 Aug. 2021, https://chicomnews.org/2021/08/28/american-college-of-sports-medicine-issues-statement-on-mental-health-challenges-for-athletes-auspol-chinesenews/.