It seems as though the world has started to increasingly open up about mental health each year, especially with the expanding social media presence in 2019. The “Bell Let’s Talk” initiative has done a lot to start that specific conversation, even with scrutiny over how they are doing it. You can’t deny the rapid growth of “support” from what Bell has been promoting about acknowledging mental illness . Within the past several years, many pro athletes have joined this conversation in talking about their own experiences with mental illness. Often times, the public has seemed to have taken this information as some sort of joke or surprise., A famous millionaire athlete having problems? Please. The lack of understanding continues with student athletes as well, for reasons such as scholarships, free gear, and this “aura” that athletes are perceived to have. This, I think is what Bell has forgotten about in their "End the Stigma" tagline, especially in such cases where there are circumstances of visible privilege. As a former student athlete, I can admit that it has, and always will be a privilege to have been a Usports athlete. That being said, the college/pro athletics scene has become a foreground for mental illness among large groups of individuals. NBA superstars Kevin Love and Demar DeRozan both came out saying they had been battling symptoms of depression and anxiety, early in 2018. Having two major superstar athletes open up about their experiences with mental illness can draw a lot of attention. However, so many of us are still unaware of the kinds of stresses that parallel high level athletics, and why they exist in the first place. We are still majorly blind to what high level athletics can do to someone’s mentality, and more specifically, why it happens.
Let us begin by reflecting on your view of what an average student athlete embodies, which in my opinion, often comes with a very flawed perception of privilege. Out of true love for the sports we play, many of us student athletes have committed to playing sports at a post-secondary level. This true love and commitment is often something that takes precedence over the "student life" experience that comes with it. Psychology Today has outlined many different factors that have been proven to cause athletes to experience anxiety and depression. One of the factors that was suggested, was perfectionism, otherwise known as overtraining to a breaking point. Some athletes do not get the same opportunities that other more experienced players get right away. This is due in part to skill level and experience. One of the most common solutions many young athletes opt out for, is to train so hard that their coach will have no choice but to play them . That in mind, as an athlete, if you are not training alongside your coach, it often becomes difficult for him/her to understand how much you’ve been busting it to earn extra time in a game. This continual overtraining can lead not only to injuries, but also to the inability to transfer valuable skills due to the pressure of high expectations. This overall, becomes something that can lead to feelings of worthlessness, because putting in that much extra training time and yielding no pay-off, hurts bad.
The fear of failure is something that strikes all athletes at a point in their career, especially after having realized the firm pre-season expectations that have been laid out for them. Athletes often get put into a position where they feel as if they are “not enough”, consequently letting down the rest of the team. This is something that I experienced in my fourth year of post-secondary. , If you become outlined as one of the “best players”, you immediately get put under a stigma. I found it became easy to stop viewing people as just fans and teammates, and started viewing everyone as just another expectation to surpass. You are put on a pedestal for everyone to see, like some sort of new zoo animal; if you don’t jump through the right hoops or balance the ball on your nose, are you worth watching?
You’re expected to take care of your body the best you can during your athletic career, but injuries are something that becomes unavoidable the longer you push your body in a sport. The effects injuries can have on your mentality can be more damaging than the actual injury itself. Student athletes often experience significant improvements over the span of their four or five year careers, for instance in skill development and gameplay. Getting injured throws a wrench in an athletes’ development straight away. In response to that, they then have to turn their focus on getting healthy rather than getting better at their sport. Concussions and head-related injuries are taken way more seriously that they have been in the past, and can be detrimental enough to take an athlete right out of school for more than a few weeks too, resulting in a negative impact on their grades and overall athletic progress. Then after getting back on the court, you can’t help but ask yourself if you will ever be the same? Are you fully healed? Are your teammates aware that you may not be 100%?
The lifestyle of the quintessential student athlete is one of the most well-known struggles we undergo. You have committed yourself to a full-time operation that requires most of your energy, effort, and mental fortitude, and on top of that you are also trying to pursue a degree? Yikes. Imagine being regularly away on weekends, except you leave on Thursday morning and come back late on Sunday, with a midterm on Monday. The pressure to study on the road all the while maintaining a level of focus on your important weekend games, Has proven to be incredibly challenging to balance at times. Some of the student athletes in the NCAA Pac-12 conference in 2015 exclaimed that they were "too exhausted to study effectively", as they explained that twenty hours a week on the court/field added up to fifty hours a week spent dedicating time to their sport. That extra thirty hours covered medical treatment, weight lifting, voluntary individual training sessions, and travelling. Falling behind in school because of commitment to your sport is a tough pill to swallow. The life of a student athlete becomes a balancing act that usually ends up taking a toll on either or performance or our grades no matter the circumstance.
This is such a small insight into how the mentality of a high level athlete can be compromised by events that will almost always take place throughout their careers at a point. There is a certain level of privilege that comes with being a student athlete or a pro athlete, that I cannot deny. Nonetheless , the idea that some athletes are trying to live a life outside of the madness, and sometimes face failure, can be super disheartening. Demar Derozan went through a divorce right before his season started, I am sure he would have loved some time off but that’s not how it goes. Kevin Love suffered an anxiety attack in the locker room before a game started and as a result got belittled on the internet and accused of being mentally soft. Shabazz Napier exclaimed he barely had any money for food during his 2014 appearance in the NCAA Final Four, to which journalists claimed was a lie. Furthermore, the NHL has lost countless athletes to suicide who were given “enforcer” roles on their respective teams. All of these incidents are thrown on a theoretical back-burner by fans, the media, and coaching staff with “performance” expectations of these allegedly struggling athletes.
Speaking from my experience being a student athlete, we are not asking you to pity us, nor are we asking you to hold an umbrella over our heads when it rains on us. We’re asking you to put aside your expectations, and just battle with us, as fans, as friends, as other humans who aren’t always okay. Athletes deserve a healthy environment to grow their skills and have fun playing the sport they love, fans sometimes forget that the athletes they watch consistently are human beings. If we can’t acknowledge ALL groups of individuals that are suffering from mental health issues, then your “Bell Let’s Talk” tweet means a little bit less, doesn’t it?
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