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Sport For Health: Talking mental healthBrain health for athletes -
You can identify the things you want to further work on in the future, but focus on what you have control over; reduce any tendency to ruminate on things you have no control over.
Enjoy the fact that the competition is over, accept that your body needs to rest and take a break, and regardless of the outcome, celebrate your hard work! Engage in activities that you have not been able to engage in during the intense training and preparation. Now that the event is over, focus on the present time and set your own daily structure by setting time for relaxing, leisure and meaningful activities.
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However, a focus on developing a non-athletic identity must occur at all phases of the sporting career and not be confined to the transition out of sport phase, since building such skills takes time and athletes are prone to unplanned retirement due to injury.
These are individuals who have a lived experience of mental ill-health and sufficient training to share their knowledge to help support others in similar situations [ 50 ]. In the sporting context, a peer workforce could include former athletes or coaches who work with current athletes to discuss and normalise experiences of mental health symptoms or their risk factors.
Former athletes can assist with athlete development programs and mobilise athletes to the importance of actively participating with such programs, based on their own experiences [ 39 ]. Mental health screening should be included alongside routine physical health checks by medical staff as part of a comprehensive framework.
Screening items should be sensitive to the elite context [ 50 , 51 ] and should be designed to provide feedback to athletes to help promote improved self-awareness, such as their mental state and triggers for symptoms.
Critical times to screen are following severe injury including concussion and during the transition into, and out of sport [ 1 ], and the lead-up to and post major competitions may also be periods of higher risk. It is important to note that there is currently a lack of widely validated athlete-specific screening tools, though one elite athlete sensitised screening measure—the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire—has been validated in a large sample of male elite athletes reporting strong psychometric properties [ 52 ], and is under further validation with female and junior athletes.
Research potential exists to not only develop further athlete-specific measures, but to determine who is best suited to conduct screening, and what credentials or training may be required to ensure safety and integrity in this process e.
that appropriate help or referral is provided to athletes who screen positive. This phase aims to mitigate the likelihood of deterioration in mental health by detecting symptoms as early as possible and facilitating referral to appropriate health professionals.
Key staff within the sports system can be assisted to develop skills in early symptom identification and to promote professional help-seeking. These should include information regarding appropriate referral sources, responses e. prevention program vs.
Protocols or guides for responding to mental health concerns become less stigmatised when wellbeing needs are already routinely promoted via foundational programs.
Early intervention is necessary in instances where the performance and life demands placed on an athlete exceed their ability to cope i.
major career-threatening injury or significant life stress. When referral out is necessary, or preferred by the athlete, ideally this should be to a mental health professional with appropriate sport sensitised training, knowledge and experience assisting elite athletes.
Early interventions need not always be face-to-face, but can be augmented by telephone or web-enabled consultations, the latter particularly relevant given the frequency with which elite athletes travel unaccompanied by the sporting entourage.
An example of an early intervention model of care is the Australian Institute of Sport AIS mental health referral network [ 56 ]. Athletes are assessed by an AIS mental health advisor, who can make a referral, if necessary, to a qualified mental health practitioner who has been credentialed to work within the network.
This practitioner then works individually with the athlete to address their needs and ideally restore their mental health and functioning [ 57 ]. Despite best efforts to prevent or intervene early, some athletes will nonetheless experience severe or complex psychopathology requiring specialist mental health care, particularly where there is a risk of harm to self or others.
In some cases, this may include hospitalisation or specialist inpatient or day programs. The IOC Expert Consensus Statement provides a summary of recommended clinical interventions for a range of mental disorders, including bipolar, psychotic, eating and depressive disorders, and suicidality [ 1 ].
The IOC Expert Consensus Statement recommends that structured plans should acknowledge and define what constitutes a mental health emergency, identify which personnel or local emergency services are contacted and when, and consider relevant mental health legislation [ 1 ].
Such guidance could potentially provide a graduated, step-by-step protocol that prepares not only the athlete for a successful return to sport, but also the microsystem that supports them. We have proposed a comprehensive framework for elite athlete mental health.
More research is needed to bolster the efficacy of the approaches discussed here in the elite sports context, as well as other factors that are under-researched in the literature, such as gender-specific considerations in mental health [ 60 ] and considerations for para-athletes [ 23 ].
We are mindful that coaches and other high-performance staff are vulnerable to mental health problems [ 61 ] and the needs of these individuals need to be incorporated into a more inclusive model of care. Further, we recognise the scope of this framework does not cover the needs of non-elite athletes.
Elements of this framework may be tailored in the future to be applicable and contextualised for non-elite environments where there may be limited resources, less professional staffing and greater limitations in athlete schedules.
Despite the exponential increase in research interest related to athlete mental wellbeing, major service delivery and treatment gaps remain.
Evaluating the efficacy of mental health prevention and intervention programs via controlled trials or other high-quality designs is urgently needed.
Program evaluation should ideally adopt an ecological systems approach to account for competition-related, individual-vulnerability and organisational factors on mental health outcomes, for example by seeking to measure system-level variables e.
the degree of perceived psychological safety within the sporting organisation [ 62 , 63 ] and individual athlete-level variables e. coping skills, relationship with coach, injury history.
As initiatives are evaluated and enhanced or adapted, developers should consult with elite sport organisations and individuals to ensure the relevance and sport sensitivity of their programs.
musculoskeletal injuries, concussion. Finally, we are acutely aware that a framework such as that articulated here requires substantial investment and that such funding is scant even in high income settings. The foundational and at-risk components lend themselves, we believe, to be adaptable to low resource settings, given the emphasis on athlete self-management and a trained peer workforce.
Adaptations to providing early intervention in low resource settings will be needed, and innovations in general mental health can act as a blueprint [ 64 ]. Regardless of settings or resources, investment in a comprehensive response to athlete mental health needs attention if it is to ever gain parity with physical health.
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By Dr. Katy Kamkar, Qthletes. Clinical Athlees, CAMH. Brain health for athletes in five individuals is affected by mental Muscle recovery for triathletes problems; no one healthh Brain health for athletes, including athletes. Despite being perceived as physically fit, active and healthy, athletes can suffer just as much as everyone else from mental health problems. Stigma in sports When athletes are physically injured, they are treated by a team of health care professionals to ensure fast and healthy recovery.
A JAMA Neurology study xthletes that young contact sports athletes could be at risk for neurogenerative diseases. A recent study published in Brain health for athletes Neurology found that young Natural fat loss sports athletes may be Brain health for athletes atjletes for long-term athldtes disorders, Importance of hydration chronic traumatic heakth CTEa progressive and fatal brain disease fir with repetitive healh impacts Healtn. The study, which halth the athletse of Healrh contact sports including football, soccer, healht, rugby, and wrestling participants younger than 30 years old at the time of death, CTE was found in 63, or These were people who played competitive sports for a relatively short period of time. Regardless of whether or not CTE was found, all of the participants in the study had, prior to their death, demonstrated behavioral changes consistent with those seen in older individuals later diagnosed with CTE. Interviews with their family members found that problems with depression and apathy were noted in about 70 percent, and that neurobehavioral changes such as executive dysfunction and impulse control issues were common. Every participant in the study, with or without CTE, had aspects of traumatic encephalopathy syndrome — the clinical syndrome associated with CTE — which include cognitive impairment, especially episodic memory and executive dysfunction, and neurobehavioral dysregulation, such as impulsivity, explosivity, and emotional dysregulation.
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